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University  of  California. 

FROM    I'HK    I.ir.RARV   Ol- 

DR.     FRANCIS     LiEKKR, 
Professor  of  History  nnd  Law  in  Columbia  Collof^e,  New  York. 


Tl{i;   (UlT    01' 

MICHAEL    REESE. 

Of  San  Fra?ic/sc('.^     t  "^ 
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Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Archive 

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DISCOURSES 

ON 

INTEMPERANCE, 

PREACHED  IN  THE 

CHURCH  IN  BRATTL.E   SQUARE, 

BOSTON,  APRIL  5,  1827, 

THE  DAY  OF  ANNUAL  FAST, 

AND  APRIL  8, 
THE  lord's  day  FOLLOWING. 


BY  JOHN  G.  PALFREY,  A.  M. 

Pastor  of  the  Church  in  Brattle  Square. 


SECOND  EDITION. 

BOSTON, 

BOWLES  AND  DEARBORN,  72  WASHINGTON  STREET. 

Isaac  R.  Butts  &  Co.  Printers. 

1827. 


*M5|t 


Some  of  the  statements  in  the  following  pages  are 
derived  from  the  documents  of  the  Massachusetts  So- 
ciety for  the  Suppression  of  Intemperance,  and  others 
from  various  sources.  The  sermons  were  prepared  in 
the  course  of  an  interrupted  week,  and  are  faulty  in 
many  respects.  But  the  author  has  no  time  to  correct 
them,  and  if  they  are  capable  of  doing  any  thing  to 
open  the  eyes  of  the  publick  to  the  tremendous  scourge 
under  which  it  is  suffering,  he  would  not  withhold 
them,  from  any  sensibility  to  criticism.  If  there  are 
any  over-statements,  he  will  be  most  heartily  glad  to 
see  them  disproved. 


DISCOIRSES. 


JEREMIAH    VI.  8. 

Be  thou  instructed,  O  Jerusalem,  lest  my  sojil  depart 
from  thee ;  lest  I  mhke  thee  desolate,  a  land  not  in- 
habited. 

The  piety  of  our  ancestors  has  trans- 
mitted to  us  the  usage  of  assembling  year  by 
year,  at  the  opening  of  the  season,  to  seek, 
with  prayer  and  fasting,  a  blessing  from  the 
God  of  harvest.  Elsewhere,  such  a  solem- 
nity is  considered  as  appropriate  to  occa- 
sions of  great  publick  distress,  and  a  stranger 
coming  among  us,  might  ask  what  reason  of 
this  kind  we  could  have  for  observing  it.  He 
had  found,  he  would  say,  a  numerous  peo- 
ple, living  on  a  bountiful  soil,  in  a  temperate 
climate,  with  every  thing  called  for  by  the 
reasonable  wishes  of  man,  within  the  reach 
of  their  industry;    with  a  free  and  at  the  ^ 


same  time  well  established  government,  re- 
lations of  extended  and  profitable  intercourse 
abroad,  and  the  rights  of  person  and  reputa- 
tion, property  and  conscience,  protected  by 
equal  laws  and  just  magistrates  at  home. 
He  had  heard  of  no  interruption  of  any  of 
the  channels  of  publick  prosperity ;  no  in- 
testine broil,  nor  wide  devastation  of  flood 
or  fire,  storm  or  earthquake ;  no  famine, 
pestilence,  nor  war. 

The  observation,  however,  would  be  su- 
perficial, and  the  inference  groundless.  If 
seasons  of  publick  distress  and  peril  call  for 
publick  fasting,  humiliation  and  prayer,  we 
have  cause  to  keep  a  fast  this  day.  It  is 
truly  a  day  for  a  reflecting  man  to  '  afflict  his 
soul,'  to  '  bow  down  his  head  as  a  bulrush, 
and  spread  sackcloth  and  ashes  under  him.' 
Not  less  than  ten  thousand  citizens  of  this 
nation,  as  there  is  good  reason  to  believe, 
have  fallen  during  the  year  now  past,  vic- 
tims to  one  mortal  scourge,  prematurely  cut 
off,    cut  off  in    the   midst    of   their   days. 


They  did  not  die  by  pestilence.  How 
happy  if  they  had !  Their  sufferings  then 
would  have  been  short  and  innocent.  They 
did  not  fall  by  the  sword.  Their  bones 
might  have  been  worthy  then  to  repose  in 
the  fair  soil  they  had  defended,  by  their  fa- 
thers' graves  which  they  had  kept  sacred 
from  an  invader's  footstep.  They  did  not 
waste  away  in  the  lingering  torments  of 
starvation.  O  how  much  less  heart-wring- 
ing would  then  have  been  the  sorrow  that 
burst  in  long  stifled  sobs  by  their  last  home. 
They  died  by  self  administered  poison ;  by 
that  cup  of  guilty  excess,  compared  with 
which  war,  famine  and  pestilence,  are  mer- 
ciful plagues.  Famine  ?  Should  we  hear 
of  one  tenth  part,  one  hundredth  part,  of  ten 
thousand  persons  likely  to  perish  of  hunger, 
we  should  be  possessed  with  horror  by  an 
event  so  unprecedented,  and  the  whole  coun- 
try would  be  subsidized  for  their  relief. 
Pestilence?  The  most  awful  visitation  of 
1^ 


6 

that  kind  ever  known  in  our  nation,^  one 
which  made  the  ears  of  all  that  heard  of  it 
to  tingle,  one  of  those  fearful  providences 
that  come  at  long  intervals  from  one  another, 
did  not  extend  its  ravages  beyond  one  city, 
and  was  content  with  less  than  four  thousand 
victims.  War  ?  Our  last  war  was  not  reck- 
oned a  comparatively  bloodless  one ;  but, 
in  the  three  years  it  lasted,  the  sword  de- 
voured in  our  armies  considerably  less  than 
five  hundred  in  a  year,f  while,  in  a  time  of 
profound  tranquillity,  another  destroyer  takes 
from  us  two  hundred  in  a  week,  and  this 
great  mortality  is  almost  unobserved.  To 
other  great  ajSlictions  of  communities,  there 
is  commonly  a  speedy  end.  When  the 
hardships  of  war  become  intolerable,  peace 
on  some  terms  is  made,  and  the  hearts  of 

*  The  yellow  fever  at  Philadelphia  in  1793. 
t  According    to   Niles'  Register,  there   fell  in    our 
armies        495  in  the  campaign  of  1812, 

422  "  "  -  1813, 

505  «  "  1814. 


the  distressed  people  revive.  If  our  borders 
had  been  wasted  in  the  past  year  by  epi- 
demick  sickness  or  scarcity,  we  should  now 
be  looking  and  praying  with  good  hope  for 
a  healthy  and  abundant  season.  But  who 
sees  any  reason  to  expect,  that  fewer  will 
perish  this  year  by  the  slow  suicide  of  guilty 
excess,  than  perished  the  last  ?  What  has 
been  done  to  avert  the  same  fate,  from  at 
least  an  equal  number?  Rather,  what  is 
not  already  done  to  ensure  it?  The  ha- 
bits are  formed,— /ormec?,  with  many  thou- 
sands of  our  countrymen,  which  with  mo- 
ral certainty  will  bring  them  to  this  end. 
Some  thousands  will  not  reach  it  till  the 
next,  or  a  following  year,  but  other  thousands 
are  riper  for  destruction,  and  they  will  find 
it  in  this.  They  are  already  close  to  the 
precipice,  and  every  hour  they  rush  to- 
wards it  with  a  madder  speed.  Can  they 
not  be  arrested?  Try  it;  try  it  with  all 
the  force  and  tenderness  of  pity ;  but  who 
is  so  inexperienced  as  to  flatter  himself  that 

If 


8 

one  will  be  saved,  for  hundreds  whose  res- 
cue will  be  attenmpted  in  vain  ?  Shall  not  the 
food  of  their  destructive  appetite  be  denied  ? 
On  the  contrary,  lavish  provision  has  been 
made  and  is  making  for  it,  by  the  industry  of 
the  nation  exerted  abroad  and  at  home.  In 
town  and  country,  from  sea  to  wilderness, 
and  from  the  northern  border  to  the  south, 
the  processes  are  uninterruptedly  going  on, 
which  extract  this  bane  of  human  life  from 
the  generous  fruits  that  nature  yields  for  its 
support;  and  every  wind  from  the  ocean 
adds  to  the  supply  a  contribution  from  fo- 
reign shores.  The  result  of  one  calculation 
which  has  been  made  publick  is,  that  one 
eighth  part  of  the  commerce  of  this  port  is 
engaged  in  the  conveyance  of  spirituous 
liquors,  or  of  the  means  of  making  them. 
And  though  I  account  this  excessive,  still, 
from  such  examination  as  I  have  been  able 
to  make,  I  am  obliged  to  infer,  that  not  far 
from  one  twelfth  part  of  our  imports,  not  re- 


exported,  consists  of  that  commodity  and  the 
materials  for  its  manufacture.^ 

We  speak  of  ten  thousand  premature 
deaths  directly  produced  by  intemperance. 
But  how  partially  does  this  represent  the 
magnitude  of  the  evil.  Look  at  it  more 
nearly,  and  see  what  kind  of  death  it  was. 

*  On  examining  this  point  more  carefully,  I  am  led 
to  think  that  the  calculation,  to  which  I  have  first  re- 
ferred, is  not  so  wide  of  the  truth  as  I  had  supposed. 
The  amount  of  imports  into  the  port  of  Boston  in  the 
year  ending  October  1826,  was  $14,246,582.  The 
amount  re-exported  I  do  not  know,  but  supposing  it  to 
have  been  the  same  in  proportion  as  in  the  country  at 
large,  property  to  the  amount  of  about  $7,000,000 
only  remained  for  consumption.  In  the  same  year,  the 
amount  imported  of  spirits  produced  from  grain  was 
$292,623;  of  molasses,  $519,624;  and  of  brandy, 
supposing  it  to  have  been  in  proportion  to  the  importa- 
tion of  this  commodity  in  the  country  at  large,  about 
$75,000;  making  a  total  of  $887,247.  Of  this,  on 
the  same  supposition,  there  were  exported  domestick 
spirits  amounting  to  about  $50,000,  or  $25,000 
worth  of  molasses,  and  foreign  spirits  amounting  to 
about  $50,000  ;  which  would  leave  $812,247  worth  for 
consumption,  considerably  over  one  ninth  part  of  the 
amount  of  imports  not  re-exported. 


10 

Each  of  those  persons  once  was  as  capable 
of  happiness,  and  perhaps  looked  for  happi- 
ness as  confidently,  as  any  one  of  us.  How 
bitter  was  the  remorse,  how  painful  were  the 
struggles  of  niany,  when  they  first  perceived 
themselves  to  be  entangled  in  the  ruinous 
habit.  What  stern  self-upbraidings  did  they 
not  utter,  what  overwhelming  self-contempt 
did  they  not  feel,  when  they  first  began  to 
think  of  their  bright  prospects  overcast,  their 
fair  name  blighted,  by  the  pernicious  indul- 
gence. Who  can  picture  the  fearful  pro- 
cess of  feeling  they  passed  through,  from  the 
time  when  they  began  to  experience  their  in- 
constant resistance  to  be  vain,  to  that,  when,: 
in  transient  intervals  of  sobriety,  they  saw 
themselves  surrendered,  soul  and  body,  to 
the  bondage  of  the  omnipotent  sin  ?  Many, 
in  the  course  of  their  fall,  having  wasted 
their  substance  with  riotous  living,  sustained 
their  last  days  on  the  coarse  bread  of  pub- 
lick  charity.  A  large  proportion  exchanged 
the  dignity  and  comfort  of  a  decent  dwell- 


11 

ing  for  a  jail.  Not  a  few  endured  those 
wrenches  of  the  mind  which  precede  and 
end  in  fatuity  and  frenzy.  AH  suffered  in 
some  one  of  the  most  loathsome  forms,  the 
feebleness  and  torments  of  bodily  disease.* 
And,  for  all  w^ho  had  sanity  to  reflect,  how 
must  they  have  shuddered,  as  they  drew 
near  their  unlamented  end,  in  recalling 
that  emphatick  scripture,  which  declares  that 
drunkards  shall  not  inherit  the  kingdom  of 
God.  The  expression  is  awfully  peremp- 
tory. But  who  that  considers  the  spiritual 
nature  of  the  heavenly  happiness,  in  connex- 
ion with  the  capacities  of  enjoyment  of  that 

*  '  A  train  of  complaints  of  the  most  dangerous  na- 
ture, at  once  destroying  the  body  and  depraving  the 
mind,  are  the  certain  followers  of  habitual  ebriety. 
Amidst  all  the  evils  of  human  life,  no  cause  of  disease 
has  so  wide  range,  or  so  large  a  share,  as  the  use  of  spi- 
rituous liquors.  *  *  *  *  More  than  one  half  of 
all  the  sudden  deaths  which  happen,  are  in  a  fit  of  in- 
toxication.'— Trotter's  Essay,  Medical,  Philosophical, 
and  Chemical,  on  Drunkenness,  and  its  effects  on  the 
Human  Body,  p.  137. 


12 

being  whose  work  on  earth  has  been  to 
sink  the  human  nature  in  the  brute,  who, 
thus  reflecting,  can  be  at  a  loss  to  justify  it, 
in  all  its  comprehensiveness  and  force  ? 

What  a  tragical  tale  would  be  told,  if  one 
such  history  could  be  written  out  at  length. 
And  yet,  to  apprehend  the  mass  of  such 
misery  which  really  exists,  we  must  repre- 
sent it  to  ourselves  as  repeated  among  us 
many  thousands  of  times  within  a  year.  As  to 
the  extremity  of  the  evil  in  each  case  where 
it  occurs,  no  one,  who  has  any  experience  or 
imagination,  needs  or  can  be  assisted  by 
the  descriptions  of  others  to  estimate  it.  Its 
extent,  I  apprehend,  is  less  understood,  and 
to  establish  this,  I  am  to  offer  some  state- 
ments which  must  needs  be  of  a  minute  and 
homely  kind.  They  will  not  on  that  account 
be  the  less  in  place,  if  they  serve  at  all  to 
illustrate  the  subject. 

I  have  stated  the  number  of  persons  who 
yearly  perish  in  these  states  by  the  direct 
effects   of  intemperance,    at  ten  thousand. 


13 

This  was  the  number  according  to  one  cal- 
culation, six  years  ago,  when  our  popula- 
tion was  much  smaller,  and  the  vice  less 
common ;  and  though  the  estimate  was  prob- 
bly  at  that  time  exorbitant,  I  greatly  fear 
that  it  might  now  be  found  to  fall  considera- 
bly within  the  truth.  The  year  before,  the 
bill  of  mortality  of  one  of  the  most  ex- 
emplarily  moral  of  our  large  towns,  (I  speak 
of  the  town  of  Salem,)  recorded  twenty 
deaths  out  of  a  hundred  and  eighty-one, 
one  ninth  part,  to  have  been  produced  di- 
rectly by  intemperance ;  and  the  remark  is 
added,  '  many  who  are  included  in  the  con- 
sumption list,  might  be  added  to  the  deaths 
by  intemperance,  because  it  is  ascertained, 
that  habits  of  intemperance  have  produced 
various  diseases,  which  have  terminated  in 
apparent  consumption.'  If  the  proportion  of 
twenty  in  a  hundred  and  eighty-one,  the  pro- 
portion of  that  orderly  town,  had  been  main- 
tained throughout  the  country,  intemperance 
would  have  been  the  direct  cause,  that  year. 


14 

of  the  death  of  nearly  thirty  thousand  citi- 
zens. In  the  same  year,  it  was  stated,  on  the 
authority  of  the  bills  of  mortality,  that  the  an- 
nual average  of  deaths  from  intoxication,  in 
this  state,  was  six  hundred  and  sixty-six.  If 
the  proportion  of  drunkards  to  the  whole 
population  be  taken  to  be  throughout  the 
union,  the  same  as  in  this  state,  whereas  in 
fact  it  is  probably  considerably  greater,  it 
would  follow  that  more  than  thirteen  thou- 
sand citizens  of  this  nation,  yearly  fell  victims 
to  drunkenness  as  long  ago  as  1821.  Three 
years  before,  from  data  which  seem  to  have 
been  accurate,  as  far  as  they  went,  it  had 
been  computed,  that  intemperance  was  the 
remote  or  proximate  cause  of  the  death  of 
about  three  persons  yearly,  in  a  population 
of  a  thousand  ;^  according  to  which  estimate, 

*  In  Portsmoutli,  21  persons  died  by  excess  in  drink- 
ing, last  year.  This  place  had  at  the  last  census  a 
population  of  7,327.  New  Haven  had  by  the  same 
census,  8,327  inhabitants.  The  Medical  Association 
of  that  city,  in  a  late  publication,  say ;  *  on  referring  to 


15 

the  number  of  persons  whose  lives  are  tlius 
more  or  less  directly  sacrificed,  would  be 
every  year,  in  this  state,  eighteen  hundred, 
and  in  the  United  States  thirty-six  thousand. 
When  we  attend  to  the  supply  provided  for 
this  use,  we  shall  see  cause  to  admit  that  the 
calculation  is  not  much,  if  at  all,  exagge- 
rated. The  consumption  of  foreign  spirituous 
liquors  was,  in  the  year  1828,  more  than  four 
and  a  half  millions  of  gallons,  and  in  the  year 
1824,  more  than  five  millions.  The  average 
yearly  amount  of  foreign  spirits  consumed  for 
ten  years  preceding  1812,  was  nearly  seven 
millions  of  gallons.*  The  use  of  them,  how- 
ever, had  been  already  in  great  part  super- 
seded by  those  of  domestick  manufacture. 

the  list  of  deaths  in  this  town  during  the  year  1826,  we 
find  that  of  the  94  persons  over  20  years  of  age,  more 
than  one  third  were,  in  our  opinion,  caused  or  hastened, 
directly,  or  indirectly,  by  intemperance  ;  and  on  refer- 
ring further  back,  we  find  a  similar  proportion  imputable 
to  the  same  cause  for  the  two  years  preceding.' 
*  Seybert's  Statistical  Annals,  p.  463. 


16 

In  1810,  according  to  the  census  then  made 
by  the  marshals,  the  quantity  thus  produced 
from  domestick  and  foreign  materials,  was 
nearly  twenty-six  millions  of  gallons,^  of 
which  six  hundred  thousand  were  exported, 
leaving  more  than  twenty-five  millions  for  the 
consumption  of  the  country  ;f  to  which  if 
the  above  named  average  amount  of  the  for- 
eign commmodity  be  added,  it  appears  that 
an  average  quantity  of  more  than  four  gal- 
lons was  consumed  in  a  year,  by  every  man, 
woman  and  child  in  the  nation,  the  slave  po- 
pulation included.  I  am  not  aware  that  any 
similar  report  to  that,  on  which  these  calcula- 
tions are  founded,  has  been  since  made.  It  is 
thought  that  the  annual  consumption  of  ar- 
dent spirits  cannot  now  amount  to  less  than 
forty-five  millions  of  gallons,f  which,  reckon- 
ing the  drinking  population  at  a  million  of  per- 
sons, would  give  them  individually  an  average 

*  Seybert's  Statistical  Annals,  p.  463.  f  lb. 

X  This  would  feed  the  Middlesex  canal  to  a  distance 
of  15  1-6  miles,  or  the  Erie  canal,  8  1-3  miles. 


17 

allowance  of  a  pint  of  liquid  poison  in  a  day. 
With  such  a  consumption,  we  could  not,  in 
any  reason,  look  for  consequences  less  dis- 
tressing than  we  witness.  If,  of  this  number, 
we  suppose  that  more  than  two  thirds  permit 
themselves  only  that  indulgence  which  is 
reckoned  moderate,  and  considerably  less 
than  one  third  drink  to  that  excess  which 
brands  them  as  decidedly  intemperate  per- 
sons, we  have  then,  in  the  nation,  three  hun- 
dred thousand  of  the  latter  class,  in  some 
stage  of  their  progress  ;  an  estimate  which  I 
am  disposed  to  think  not  far  from  the  truth, 
and  almost  certainly  not  beyond  it.  We 
come  to  a  similar  result  by  a  different  method 
of  calculation.  If,  for  the  ten  thousand  who 
die  yearly  by  the  direct  effect  of  intempe- 
rance, there  be  twice  as  many  more  of  such 
as  either,  in  consequence,  fall  victims  to  some 
one  of  the  various  diseases  to  which  it  pre- 
disposes, or,  being  intemperate,  are  from 
causes  independent  of  their  vice,  arrested  by 
some  one  in  the  variety  of  mortal  diseases,  we 

It 


18 

have  then  a  yearly  mortality  of  thirty  thou- 
sand intemperate  persons,  a  result  below,  but 
not  far  from  that  of  the  computation  which  I 
mentioned  before,  as  founded  on  the  assump- 
tion of  intemperance  being  the  remote  or 
proximate  cause  of  three  deaths  yearly,  in  a 
population  of  a  thousand.  And  supposing 
ten  years  to  be  the  average  term  of  life,  after 
habits  of  excess  are  fixed,  (a  favourable  sup- 
position, it  is  true,  for  this  is  an  evil  work, 
against  which,  vengeance  is  commonly  exe- 
cuted speedily,)  it  would  then  follow,  that 
there  are  three  hundred  thousand  inebriates 
living  in  this  country  at  a  time,  the  same  re- 
sult as  appeared  from  the  other  method  of 
calculation. 

II.  But,  secondly,  the  deplorable  misery 
which  the  drunkard  feels  is  by  no  means  all 
that  he  inflicts.  Most  men  belong  to  families. 
Almost  all  men  at  first  have  friends.  How 
does  the  heart  of  frendship  bleed,  when  it 
sees  the  object  of  its  regard  wedding  him- 
self to  utter  ruin,  for  this  world,   and   the 


19 

world  to  come.  What  moving  remonstran- 
ces are  uttered,  how  hard  to  bear  the 
alternations  of  timid  hope  and  cruel  disap- 
pointment, as  promises  of  reformation  are 
successively  made  and  broken.  But  friend- 
ship, if  it  will,  can  be  inconstant  when  its 
object  is  unworthy,  and  go  elsewhere  for 
consolation.  Not  so  with  domestick  love. 
What  pangs  rend  brothers'  and  sisters'  hearts, 
when  one  of  a  once  united  family  is  seen 
going  thus  astray.  With  what  agonizing  soli- 
citude does  parental  affection  watch  the  child, 
whom  idleness  or  bad  company  has  enticed 
into  the  destroyer's  paths.  With  what  soul- 
absorbing  earnestness  are  all  methods  of 
amendment  tried,  and  when  they  fail,  what 
mingled  shame  and  anguish  bow  down  the 
hoary  head.  Worst  of  all,  when  the  deadly 
fascination  has  fastened  on  them  whom  prov- 
idence has  set  to  rule  in  the  domestick 
sphere.  The  husband  and  father,  fatigued 
with  his  labour,  or  perplexed  wdth  his  cares, 
or  perhaps  from  the  mere  excitement  of  good 
2 


20 

fortune,  or  in  the  hearty  greeting  of  hospi- 
tality, is  observed  to  give  in  to  indulgences 
which  excite  at  first  only  occasional  alarm. 
By  and  by  his  spirits  appear  disturbed,  and 
his  temper  unequal.  The  meek  assiduities 
of  conjugal  affection  are  sometimes  rudely 
repulsed,  and  his  children  hesitate  to  greet 
his  return  with  their  once  always  welcome 
caresses,  doubtful  whether  it  is  with  a  maud- 
lin fondness,  or  a  terrifying  severity,  that 
they  are  to  be  met.  His  habits  of  regular 
industry  are  not  maintained ;  employment 
does  not  seek  him  as  it  has  done  ;  and  be- 
fore long,  it  appears  that  his  affairs  are  em- 
barrassed, and  provision  for  the  wants  of  his 
household  is  not  punctually  made.  Morti- 
fied at  the  change  which  he  sees  at  his 
home,  he  absents  himself  from  it  more  and 
more.  The  alternative  is  the  society  of  the 
tippling  house,  from  which  the  wakeful  wife 
awaits  him  night  after  night,  to  receive  his 
insults,  if  he  shall  stagger  home  an  angry 
brute,  or  busy  herself  to  restore  him  to  con- 


21 

sciousness,  if  he  shall  be  conveyed  home  a 
senseless  load.     There  is,  probably,  not  a  day 
in  which  this  scene  is  not  acted,  in  thousands 
of  the  dwellings  of  this  happy  country.     He 
wakes  in  the  morning  from  his  deep  sleep,  to 
feel  a  sick  craving  which  must  be  relieved  at 
the  accustomed  haunt ;  and  if  he  be  of  that 
largest  class,  whose  daily  industry  should  pro- 
vide their  daily  bread,  she  who  has  watched 
and  wept  by  him  till  the  dawn,  awaits  his  de- 
parture, to  apply  herself  to  the  feeble  and  sor- 
rowful labour  which  must  buy  her  little  ones 
food,  if  indeed  she  shall  be  able  to  conceal  its 
earnings  from  their  tyrant  to  be   devoted  to 
that  use.     A  common  end  of  all  this  is,  that 
the  decent  dwelling  of  industry  and  content 
having  sustained  the  successive  changes  that 
convert  it  into  the  rueful  abode  of  want,  its 
scanty   furniture  is  sold  to  pay  the  tavern 
score,  and  its  once   happy  tenants  join  the 
number  of  similarly  ill-fated  persons  in  the 
alms-house.     To  those  families,  which  the 
bounty  of  providence  has  placed  above  such 


22 

consequences  of  vice  in  their  head,  still  some 
portion  of  the  curse  of  the  drunkard,  that  he 
shall  come  to  poverty,  is  apt  to  clmg  ;  and 
in  such,  the  sufferings  of  the  mind  too,  are 
for  the  most  part,  felt  with  added  keenness. 
All  alike  are  exposed  to  the  distress  and  dis- 
grace of  follies  and  crimes  committed  by  the 
drunkard  in  paroxysms  of  his  madness,  and 
all  alike  suffer  the  mischiefs  of  a  depraving  ex- 
ample, and  the  loss  of  that  respectability,  that 
instruction,  tliat  aid  in  all  interests,  spiritual, 
intellectual,  and  temporal,  which  a  family  has 
a  right  to  expect  from  its  head.^  There  is 
one  case,  if  possible,  yet  more  revolting  ;  and 
it  is  not  unknown  to  experience.  It  is  when 
female  purity  is  touched  with  this  deadly 
stain.  That  is  a  wreck  of  all  that  God  has 
made  most  honourable  and  lovely  among  his 

*  Dr.  Rush  (Inquiry  p.  8.)  appears  to  think  that  a 
tendency  to  intemperance  is  transmitted  in  families,  not 
only  by  example,  but  by  physical  laws.  Dr.  Trotter  in 
his  learned  Essay,  refers  various  physical  and  mental 
maladies  to  the  intemperance  of  parents. 


23 

earthly  works,  which  is  truly  meet  for  angels 
to  weep  over.  What  are  it3  conseqences 
too,  at  least  in  instances  in  which  the  most 
important  relations  of  woman  are  sustained, 
and  her  influence,  rightly  used,  is  one  of  the 
most  excellent  instruments  of  the  dispensa- 
tions of  the  divine  mercy.  A  man's  associ- 
ations with  religion  and  goodness  settle  round 
his  home.  Drive  them  thence,  and  you  se- 
ver his  hold  upon  them.  In  the  bustle  of 
life,  his  mind  Ts  crowded,  perplexed,  shaken. 
He  goes  home  to  refresh  his  virtues.  Let 
him  find  there  sensual  degradation  in  one  of 
its  most  hateful  forms,  and  what  wonder  if  he 
learn  to  forsake  it?  What  wonder,  if,  disap- 
pointed and  desperate,  he  forsake  it  for  the  re- 
sorts of  vice,  and  himself  have  recourse  for  re- 
lief to  the  same  insane  indulgence  ?  And  then, 
the  children  whom  it  has  pleased  God  in  his 
mysterious  providence  to  commit  to  such  a 
mother.  Neglected,  harshly  treated  at  one 
lime,  and  at  another  the  subjects  of  indul- 
gence as  injurious,  uninstructed,  (at  least  by 
2^ 


24 

n  consistent  example,  the  best  of  teachers,) 
and  when  the  offence  becomes  gross,  having 
those  feelings  of  reverential  tenderness,  which 
most  powerfully  of  all  things,  a  mother's  love 
is  fitted  to  call  forth,  and  which  in  almost  all 
worthy  men,  have  much  connexion  with 
whatever  is  best  in  their  character,  having 
these  delicate  and  influential  feelings,  I  say, 
displaced  by  associations  of  mere  brutality, 
what  is  to  be  augured  of  the  temporal  or  eter- 
nal prospects  of  such  children  ?  To  the  ma- 
ternal feelings,  the  good  being  who  implanted 
them,  gave  an  unequalled  strength.  They 
reign  alike  supreme  in  the  proudest  and  the 
lowliest  bosom.  Among  all  impulses  of  all 
various  kinds,  only  one  has  been  found  of 
force  to  subdue  them,  and  that  is  the  love  of 
intemperate  drinking.  Horrible  as  the  rela- 
tion is,  there  are  authenticated  instances  of 
mothers  taking  from  their  children's  mouths 
the  bread  which  charity  had  given  to  satisfy 
their  hunger ;  yea,  literally  stripping  from 
their  children  the  clothes  which  charity  had 


25 

given  to  keep  them  from  the  cold,  and  sell- 
ing them  for  intoxicating  liquor.  If  the  pas- 
sion is  strong  enough  to  do  this,  is  there  any 
thing  else  of  such  appalling  might  ? 

Considering  the  connexion  of  most  men 
with  either  families  or  friends,  would  it  be 
unreasonable  to  suppose,  that  for  every  three 
habitually  intemperate  persons,  there  are  as 
many  as  seven  others,  whose  happiness  is  in 
some  way  seriously  affected  by  the  vice  of 
those  three  ?  If  it  be  so,  and  there  be  now 
living  in  this  country  three  hundred  thousand 
persons  devoted  to  the  habit,  then  the  unhap- 
piness  arising  from  it  extends  itself  directly 
to  a  million  of  persons,  a  twelfth  part  of  the 
population  of  the  country.  This  is  a  very 
startling  conclusion,  but  I  see  not  how  the 
inferences  that  lead  to  it  are  to  be  escaped, 
and  also  it  is  to  be  considered,  that  in  that 
class  of  society  upon  which  most  of  my  hear- 
ers (being  acquainted  with  it)  would  form 
their  judgment,  the  evil  is  incomparably  less 
than  in  others,  and  that  this  portion  of  our 
2t 


26 

country,  on  the  whole,  presents  an  unduly  fa- 
vourable specimen.  If  one  man  in  twelve 
throughout  this  nation  suffers  in  sbme  way 
an  important  abatement  from  his  happiness  in 
consequence  of  the  existence  of  fixed  habits 
of  drunkenness  in  himself  or  some  one  for 
whom  he  strongly  feels, — nay,  qualify  the 
supposition  as  you  will,  suppose  there  were 
but  one  such  man  in  twenty,  in  thirty, — no 
more  need  be  said  to  establish  the  conclu- 
sion, that  intemperance  is  a  prodigious  pub- 
lick  evil,  and  requires  very  serious  publick 
notice  ;  that  a  great  national  calamity  at  this 
moment  is  endured,  and  demands  a  great 
common  effort.  What  a  voice  of  wailing 
would  be  heard,  if  one  man  in  thirty  through- 
out this  republick  were  sentenced  by  some 
savage  power  to  lose  a  hand.  Yet  what 
were  this,  compared  with  the  tenfold  worse 
than  widowhood  of  a  drunkard's  wife,  and 
his  more  than  orphaned  children's  shame  ? 

III.  The  evil  which  we  are  deploring,  has, 
in   the  third  place,  political  aspects  of  the 


most  alarming  character.  THey  open  a  to- 
pick  which  may  be  consideresd  to  have  some 
appropriateness  on  a  day  solemnized  by 
publick  authority  like  this.  A  sad  pre-emi- 
nence it  is,  but  the  politician  and  the  political 
economist  of  America  have  need  to  devote  a 
special  share  of  their  inquiries  and  counsels 
for  the  publick,  to  the  effects  of  the  use  of 
ardent  spirits. 

1.  And,  first,  as  to  the  waste  of  property 
which  it  occasions. 

According  to  the  estimate  before  referred 
to,  forty-five  millions  of  gallons  of  ardent  spi- 
rits of  the  different  kinds  are  annually  con- 
sumed in  this  country.  Reckoning  the  cost 
of  these  to  the  consumer  at  an  average  of 
two  thirds  of  a  dollar,  the  amount  annually 
expended  in  this  way  in  the  United  States, 
would  be  thirty  millions  of  dollars  ;  a  sum 
which,  though  falling  much  short  of  the  esti- 
mate that  has  commonly  been  made,  is  great- 
er than  that  levied  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
general  government  in  all  its  departments,  in 


28 

the  proportion  of  five  to  two.  Of  this  sum, 
this  city,  taking  its  appropriations  of  this  na- 
ture to  be  in  the  ratio  of  its  population,  pays 
yearly  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars, 
about  half  the  amount  of  its  annual  corporate 
expenditure.  Undoubtedly,  however,  this 
estimate  for  the  city  must  give  a  result  much 
below  the  truth,  as  at  this  rate  each  licensed 
retailer  would  sell  on  an  average  to  the 
amount  of  less  than  five  dollars  in  a  week, 
even  if  they  sold  all  that  is  consumed,  which 
again  is  by  no  means  the  case.  The  pro- 
portion of  the  commonwealth,  reckoned  upon 
its  population,  would  be  a  million,  five  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars  ;  six  times  as  much  as 
the  revenue  that  yearly  goes  into  its  treasury. 
Two  hundred  thousand  dollars,  perhaps,  are 
annually  paid  by  the  commonwealth  for  the  sup- 
port of  the  christian  ministr^^,  and  two  hundred 
and  fifty  for  publick,  and  two  hundred  thousand 
for  private  instruction  ;  six  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  dollars  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
joint  interests  of  learning  and  religion,  and 


29 

fifteen  hundred  thousand,  at  liie  lowest  com- 
putation, for  ardent  spirits.  A  million  and  a 
half  of  dollars  annually  paid  for  intoxicating 
liquors,  while  to  the  venerable  seat  of  learn- 
ing, the  pride  of  the  noble  founders  of  our 
State,  from  which  as  from  the  heart  into  the 
system,  has  gone  forth  through  successive 
generations  the  life  blood  of  its  strength,  it 
refuses  to  continue  the  grant  of  ten  thousand 
dollars  a  year,  because  it  is  too  poor.  A  like 
instance  on  another  scale  is  known,  of  a  tow^n 
of  more  than  three  thousand  inhabitants, 
which  ceased  to  support  the  institutions  of  re- 
ligion, merely  on  the  ground  of  pecuniary  in- 
competency, when  it  was  found  on  inquiry  to 
spend  ten  thousand  dollars  annually  on  spirit- 
uous liquors.  In  the  year  1820,  it  was  as- 
certained that  the  sum  of  one  million  eight 
hundred  and  ninety  three  thousand  dollars 
was  thus  mischievously  bestowed  in  the  city 
of  New  York. 

But  as  regards  waste,  such  statements  as 
this,  it  will  be  said,  only  shew  that  money  is 


30 

shifting  hands,  and  employing  industry.  It 
employs  little  industry,  but  as  far  as  it  does 
this,  it  is  rather  to  be  regarded  as  a  bounty  to 
unproductive  labour ;  and  certainly  it  might 
shift  hands  to  better  purpose.  But  to  bring 
die  waste  to  a  stricter  test,  he  who  consumes 
daily  a  pint  of  spirits  made  of  rye,  consumes 
yearly  twenty  five  or  thirty  bushels  of  that 
valuable  grain ;  and  there  being,  as  I  have 
stated,  a  million  times  that  consumption 
among  the  population  of  our  country,  it  fol- 
lows that  a  quantity  of  nourishing  food  equiva- 
lent to  twenty  five  or  thirty  millions  of  bushels 
of  grain  is  annually  thus  consumed. 

Again,  with  respect  to  publick  waste  ;  in- 
temperance is  the  great  cause  of  pauperism. 
The  proportion  of  persons  thus  reduced  to 
want,  to  the  whole  number  maintained  at  the 
publick  charge,  varies,  as  might  be  expected, 
in  different  places.  In  the  town  of  Ports- 
mouth, ten  years  ago,  a  careful  examination 
of  the  circumstances  of  the  tenants  of  the 
alms-house,  showed  the  number    of    those 


31 

whom  love  of  this  kind  of  pleasure  had  made 
poor  men,  to  be  sixty  four  out  of  eighty  five, 
nearly  four  fifths.  In  Pordand,  about  the 
same  time,  there  were  seventy  one  such  out 
of  eighty  five,  nearly  six  sevenths.  In  the 
state  of  New  York,  in  1S24,  the  proportion 
was  four  thousand  seven  hundred  and  forty- 
one  out  of  six  thousand  eight  hundred  and 
ninety-six,  more  than  two  thirds.  In  the 
city  of  Baltimore,  in  the  year  ending  April 
1826,  of  seven  hundred  and  thirty-nine  per- 
sons received  into  the  alms-house,  five  hun- 
dred and  fifty-four,  that  is  three  quarters, 
were  abandoned  to  intemperate  habits.*  The 
report  on  the  pauper  laws  of  this  common- 
wealth, made  to  the  legislature  by  a  Commit- 
tee in  1821,  contains  the  report  of  one  town, 
that  of  twenty-eight  persons  in  its  alms-house, 
there  were  but  two  who  were  not  brought 
thither,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  by  intem- 

*  Fifty  four  were  maniacs,  and  seven  cripples,  from 
this  cause  ;  and  twenty-eight  suffering  under  fractures 
and  wounds,  received  in  a  state  of  intoxication. 


32 

perance.  The  general  inference  is,  that  there 
cannot  be  a  less  proportion  than  two  thirds 
who  become  a  publick  burden  from  this  cause. 
The  annual  expenditure  of  the  commonwealth 
in  this  way  was  reckoned,  in  the  report^  which 
I  have  quoted,  at  three  hundred  and  sixty- 
thousand  dollars,  two  hundred  and  forty 
thousand  of  which,  at  this  rate,  was  levied  in 
favour  of  persons  ruined  by  one  vice.  It  was 
also  found  that  in  the  twenty  years  immedi- 
ately preceding,  pauperism  had  increased 
three  fifths.  If  its'*  increase  has  not  been 
checked,  and  intemperance  has  maintained 
its  ground  among  the  causes,  it  levies  at  this 
moment  a  tax  of  this  kind,  of  three  hundred 
and  sixty  thousand  dollars.    But  other  chari- 

*  A  similar  report  was  made  in  1820,  to  the  Legisla- 
ture of  New  Hampshire,  from  which  it  appeared  that 
the  expense  for  paupers  was  in  a  ratio  of  increase,  which 
would  douhle  it  once  in  five  years.  The  Committee 
thereupon  brought  in  a  bill,  providing  among  other 
things,  that '  no  person,  who  shail  be  reduced  to  pover- 
ty by  habitual  drunkenness,  shall  be  supported  by  any 
town.' 


33 

ties  also  provide  for  it ;  that  is,  there  is  in 
other  ways  a  waste  of  property  for  its  sup- 
port. In  1820,  it  was  officially  stated,  that  of 
eighty-seven  patients  admitted  into  the  New 
York  Hospital  for  the  Insane,  the  insanity  of 
twenty-seven,  nearly  a  third,  was  caused  by 
the  immoderate  use  of  ardent  spirits.  A 
physician  attached  to  the  Philadelphia  Hospi- 
tal, reported  one  third  of  the  insane  during 
his  connexion  with  that  institution,  to  have 
incurred  their  dreadful  malady  through  the 
same  vice  ;  and  in  our  General  Hospital,  since 
its  institution,  almost  every  individual  case 
which  has  proved  fatal,  of  casualty,  of  acci- 
dental wounds,  has  proved  so  in  consequence 
of  the  subject  being  addicted  to  excess  in 
drinking.  Concerning  the  proportion  of  such 
persons  cured  or  still  under  treatment,  I  am 
not  informed. 

The  expense  bestowed  in  the  support  of 
paupers,  who  have  become  such  by  intem- 
perance, does  not  represent  the  publick  loss 
occasioned  by  them.     Considering  the  eco- 


34 

nomical  scale  on  which  the  publick  maintains 
them,  it  would  be  rating  the  worth  of  their 
industry  low,  to  say  that  the  portion  who 
might  labour,  if  their  vice  had  not  disabled 
them,  might  earn  twice  as  much  as  the  living 
of  the  whole  now  costs.  In  a  country  like 
this,  it  is  safe  to  assume,  that  every  healthy 
man  is  able  to  maintain  himself  and  a  family  in 
decency,  and  some  degree  of  comfort ;  which 
at  the  lowest  calculation,  requires  him  to  earn 
twice  as  much  as  the  sum  with  which  the 
publick  supports  a  family  of  paupers.  The 
intemperate  paupers  of  this  commonwealth, 
then,  with  the  strength  which  their  vice  has 
stolen  from  them,  instead  of  costiag  it  three 
hundred  and  sixty  thousand  dollars,  would  be 
able  to  contribute  to  the  common  stock,  an 
amount  of  labour  worth  seven  hundred  and 
twenty  thousand,  making  a  difference  to  its 
wealth  of  more  than  a  million  of  dollars 
annually ;  and  if  we  add  to  this,  the  million 
and  a  half  expended  in  the  purchase  of  ardent 
spirits,  the  result  is  over  two  millions  and  a 


35 

half,  paid  annually  by  the  commonwealth,  in 
these  two  ways,  for  them  and  their  effects. 
The  annual  pauper  expenses  of  the  union, 
for  the  intemperate,  have  been  stated  to  be 
twelve  millions  of  dollars.  If  the  argument 
were  applied  to  that  sum,  that  is,  if  that  sum 
were  held  to  represent  one  third  of  the  cost 
which  intemperance  brings  in  one  way  on  the 
community,  what  a  vast  effect  would  this 
cause  appear  to  have  on  the  national  resources. 
But  I  do  not '  pursue  it  in  regard  to  them, 
because  I  know  not  on  what  grounds  the  esti- 
mate is  made,  and  incline  to  think  it  cannot 
be  relied  on.^ 


*  It  will  be  observed,  that  I  have  taken  no  notice  of 
the  large  expenditures  of  voluntary  charitable  associa- 
tions, and  of  private  benevolence,  on  both  of  which  in- 
temperance makes  its  drains  quite  as  much  as  on  the 
legal  provision,  if  not  more.  Intemperance  is  account- 
able, as  will  appear  under  the  next  head,  for  a  large  part 
of  the  cost  of  the  infraction,  administration  and  execu- 
tion of  the  criminal  and  other  laws.  Also,  the  commu- 
nity is  heavily  taxed  for  the  drinking  of  the  publick, 
servants.     Among  tlie  provisions  for  the  army,  adver- 

n 


36 

2.  A  second  way  in  which  intemperance 
affects  the  publick  weal,  is  through  its  tendency 
to  multiply  crimes.  We  scarcely  take  up  a 
newspaper  that  we  do  not  meet  an  account 
of  some  outrage  committed  under  the  influ- 
ence of  this  insanity.  Of  one  thousand  eight 
hundred  and  ninety-five  complaints  presented 
to  the  police  court  of  this  city,  during  the  last 
year,  four  hundred  and  ten,  two  ninths,  were 
under  the  statute  against  common  drunkards. 
We  could  not  adduce  this  naked  fact,  as 
proof  that  intemperance  prompts  to  crime, 
but  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  what  actu- 
ally led  to  complaint  against  these  individuals, 
was  commonly  some  act  or  practice,  which 
marked  them  as  disorderly  citizens,  or  trou- 
blesome neighbours.  In  the  same  period, 
were  presented,  at  the  same  tribunal,  four 
hundred  and  seventy  cases  of  assault  and 
battery,  three  quarters  of  which,  it  is  thought, 

tised  for  by  the  commissary  department,  to  be  delivered 
in  the  years  1822  and  1823,  were  73,240  gallons  of 
whiskey. 


37 

occurred  in  drunken  broils,  and  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  other  crimes,  there  adjudged 
on,  is  referred  to  the  same  cause.  The  re- 
cords of  ^  our  courts  certainly  are  not  to  be 
taken  as  an  unfavourable  standard,  whereby 
to  estimate  what  is  doing  in  other  cities  equal- 
ly populous  ;  and  statements  from  other  cities 
confirm  the  general  rule,  in  at  least  an  equal 
application  to  them.  In  a  report  of  the  New 
York  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Pauper- 
ism, presented  in  1819,  it  was  stated,  that 
'three  fourths  of  the  assaults  and  batteries 
charged  in  the  city  and  county  of  New  York, 
and  brought  before  the  court  of  Sessions,  pro- 
ceed from  the  degrading  use  of  ardent 
spirits.'^  A  judge  of  North  Carolina  lately 
declared  from  the  bench,  that  of  the  cases  of 

*  Another  report  made  in  1821,  states,  that  '  the 
whole  number  of  complaints  for  assaults  and  batteries, 
during  the  last  year,  was  1061.  During  the  first  six 
months  of  that  year,  the  number  was  409 ;  in  the  last 
six  months,  652.  About  180  new  licences  were  granted 
in  the  early  part  of  those  last  six  months,  in  the  absence 
of  the  mayor.' 

3 


38 

manslaughter  which  had  come  before  him, 
there  was  not  one  which  had  not  been  occa- 
sioned by  intemperance,  and  few  of  murder, 
which  were  not  attributable  to  the  same  cause. 
Of  one  thousand  and  sixty-one  cases  of  crim- 
inal prosecutions  in  a  court  of  that  state,  more 
than  eight  hundred  are  likewise  stated  to  have 
had  their  origin  in  this  vice.  The  experience 
of  England  is  not  ours,  but  the  tendencies  of 
the  same  sin  are  every  where  essentially  the 
same,  and  therefore  I  will  quote  from  an  in- 
teresting paper,  which  I  have  lately  seen,  on 
this  subject,  a  remark  of  Sir  Matthew  Hale.* 
'  The  places  of  judicature,'  said  that  great 
lawyer,  '  which  I  have  so  long  held  in  this 
kingdom,  have  given  me  opportunity  to  ob- 
serve the  original  cause  of  most  of  the  enor- 
inities  that  have  been  committed  for  the  space 

*  Report  of  the  Portsmouth  Society  for  the  Suppres- 
sion of  Vice,  published  in  the  Massachusetts  Journal, 
Vol.  I.  No.  37.  The  report  has  been  ascribed  to  the 
late  lamented  N.  A.  Haven,  a  name  among  the  truly- 
dear  to  letters,  philanthropy,  and  religion. 


39 

of  near  twenty  years ;  and  by  a  due  observa- 
tion, I  have  found,  that  if  the  murders  and 
manslaughters,  the  burglaries  and  robberies, 
the  riots  and  tumults,  the  adulteries, — and 
other  great  enormities,  that  have  happened  in 
that  time,  were  divided  into  five  parts,  four 
of  them  have  been  the  issue  and  product  of 
excessive  drinking,  of  taverns  and  ale-house 
meetings.' 

3.  But  there  are  dangers  threatening  this 
nation  from  this  cause,  more  serious  than  the 
waste  which  its  rich  resources  are  well  able 
to  redress,  or  even  than  the  crimes,  which  its 
laws,  standing  and  administered  as  now,  are 
adequate  to  keep  in  check.  It  has  pleased 
God,  in  his  great  goodness,  to  permit  this 
people  to  govern  themselves,  and  so  to  be  dis- 
pensed from  the  severe  oppressions  in  mind, 
body  and  estate,  which  the  many  are  wont  to 
feel  wherever  power  is  lodged  in  the  hands 
of  the  few.  Though  a  perfect  independence 
has  existed  but  of  late  in  form,  most  of  its 
privileges  have  been  enjoyed  since  the  earli- 


40 

est  period  of  our  institutions.  The  founders 
of  those  institutions  and  the  successors  to  their 
lot  were  men  fit  to  be  trusted  with  the  great 
task  of  self-government,  and  we  have  still 
prospered  in  that  task,  because  a  portion  of 
their  spirit  has  descended  to  their  children. 
They  were  men,  to  whom  industrious,  hardy, 
frugal  habits  gave  strength  of  body,  and  clear- 
ness and  steadfastness  of  mind.  They  were 
no  slaves  to  luxury,  that  they  could  be  bought, 
nor  victims  to  it  that  they  could  be  tamed  and 
trampled  on  ;  and  therefore  an  almost  unpar- 
alleled freedom  is  our  birthright  this  day. 
But  should  a  base  sensuality  pursue  and  ma- 
ture the  conquests  it  has  hitherto  attempted 
with  such  deplorable  success,  where  then 
will  be  the  nervous  arms  that  should  defend 
this  soil  as  it  has  been  defended  ; — where  the 
political  wisdom  widely  diffused,  to  keep 
watch  for  the  nation's  safety,  for  widely 
diffused  it  must  be,  or  the  destinies  of  the 
nation  will  cease  to  be  committed  to  the 
most  trusty  men  3 — where  the  spirit  of  pub- 


41 

lick  virtue^  which  will  be  ready  for  every  sac- 
rifice but  the  sacrifice  of  honour  and  duty  ? 
I  do  not  say  that  we  are  to  see  our  warn- 
ing in  our  predecessors  on  this  soil,  who 
have  been  swept  away  like  the  blighted 
leaves  of  their  forests  before  the  breath  of 
the  pestilence  we  have  been  this  day  de- 
ploring. 1  do  not  say  that  in  an  application 
to  us  as  to  them,  the  judgment  predicted  in 
our  text  is  to  be  literally  fulfilled,  and  this  place 
of  our  possession  to  be  made  '  desolate,  a  land 
not  inhabited.'  I  affirm  no  more  than  is  past 
contradiction  ;  that  slaves  to  their  own  desires 
are  all  ready  to  be  slaves  to  other  men;  that 
luxury  has  been  the  bane  and  ruin  of  repub- 
licks ;  and  that  the  vile  indulgence  which  is 
now  a  destruction  wasting  at  noonday  among 
us,  is  luxury  in  one  of  its  most  menacing 
forms,  and  prepares  a  worthless  population 
the  most  effectually  for  a  master's  yoke.  We 
are  jealous  of  our  liberties,  we  say.  And  are 
we  the  first  of  modern  free  states  that  have 
been    so,   and  yet  have   fallen?     Was  not 


42 

Venice  watchful  of  its  liberty,  and  resolute  to 
maintain  it,  till  enterprise  brought  wealth, 
and  wealth,  indulgence,  and  indulgence,  effem- 
inacy, and  effeminacy  bondage?  We  are 
wise  and  refined,  we  thitik.  Was  Florence 
less  so,  when  it  unsaid  all  its  weighty  republi- 
can maxims,  and  bowed  its  neck  to  the  foot 
of  a  rich  and  popular  citizen  ?  No,  the  guar- 
dian of  our  institutions  is  publick  virtue ;  an 
erect,  manly  virtue,  in  full  command  of  all  its 
powers ;  an  independent  virtue,  not  capable 
of  being  seduced  for  the  offered  supply  of  a 
gross  appetite.  Let  but  the  habit  we  have 
been  today  contemplating  pursue  its  ravages, 
and  that  virtue  will  fast  be  sapped.  A  mise- 
rable population  will  grow  numerous,  the 
subjects  alike  of  intimidation  and  bribes. 
Without  sense  of  character,  without  means  of 
living,  they  will  stand  ready  to  be  the  instru- 
ments of  the  ambitious  purposes  of  any 
wicked  man.  Is  it  thought  such  persons  will 
value  their  own  political  prerogatives  too 
much  to  forego  them,  though  they  may  not 


43 

respect  those  of  others,  too  much  to  invade 
them  ?  What  care  such  persons  for  the 
difference  between  one  political  relation  and 
another  ?  Their  tastes  have  another  object ; 
and  is  it  to  be  supposed  that  the  despotick 
appetite  against  which  natural  affection  is 
powerless,  is  to  pause  in  opposition  to  a  thing 
so  unsubstantial  as  a  theory  of  the  rights  of 
man  ? 

I  cannot  avoid  thinking,  that  as  there  is  no 
darker  stain  on  our  national  morals,  so  there 
is  no  darker  cloud  over  our  political  pros- 
pects,— the  prospect  of  the  permanency  of 
our  free  institutions, — than  this.  I  see  not 
how  this  view  can  be  gainsaid,  if  it  be  true,  as 
it  is  unquestionable,  that  intemperance  is  an 
evil  of  vast  extent  among  us;  that  it  is  a  tho- 
rough  corrupter  of  the  mind;  that  the  disorders 
of  a  depraved  population  almost  demand  a 
despotism,  and  make  it  acceptable,  and  that 
its  services  may  always  be  bought  to  establish 
one.  I  never  see  the  drunken  crowd  on  our 
publick  days  celebrating  their  freedom,  that  I 
3t 


44 

do  not  think  they  are  then  preparing  them- 
selves to  part  with  it.  I  cannot  but  consider 
it  as  incumbent  on  us  as  good  citizens,— as 
friends  to  civil  liberty,  and  desirous  to  trans- 
mit its  blessings, — as  careful  for  posterity,  and 
anxious  to  secure  to  them  the  privileges  we 
so  value  for  ourselves, — I  cannot  but  consider 
it  as  imperiously  incumbent  on  us,  earnestly 
to  inquire  what  we  may  do,  and  do  with  our 
might  what  we  may,  to  stay  for  them  the 
march  of  this  appalling  plague.  I  cannot  but 
consider  it  to  be  so  on  the  most  general  and 
admitted  grounds.  Scripture  does  not  teach 
more  emphatically  than  historical  experience 
the  doctrines,  that  righteousness  exalteth  a 
nation,  and  sin  is  the  ruin  as  well  as  reproach 
of  any  people.  The  masters  of  political  wis- 
dom have  no  weightier  lesson  to  instruct  in, 
than  that  under  the  just  government  of  a  holy 
God,  great  national  sins  always,  sooner  or 
later,  draw  down  great  national  judgments. 
Individuals  go  for  their  retribution  to  the  other 
world,  and  in  this  the  wicked  may  prosper; 


45 

but  nations  are  not  known  in  the  other  world, 
and  they  meet  their  retribution  here.  But 
whatever  be  thought  of  our  dangers  and  obli- 
gations as  citizens, — as  philanthropists  and 
christians,  our  duty,  in  its  principles,  is  plain. 
Never  did  a  general  calamity  afflict  this  land 
calling  near  so  loudly  on  compassionate  and 
christian  men  for  sorrow,  inquiry,  concern 
and  effort.  I  cannot  now  enter  on  an  inves- 
tigation so  extensive  as  that  into  the  means  of 
exertion  which  offer  some  assurance  of  suc- 
cess. But  a  useful  beginning  will  have  been 
made,  if  we  have  come  to  see  this  day  in  any 
clearer  light,  how  critical,  how  extreme  the 
exigency  is.  If  we  are  not  altogether  blind  to 
it,  human  as  we  are,  and  therefore  indifferent 
to  nothing  which  affects  the  interests  of  men, 
our  hearts  cannot  but  bleed  at  the  view  of 
many  thousands  of  our  brethren  and  compan- 
ions yearly  taking  that  path  to  utter  ruin, 
which  once  entered  on,  there  is  scarcely 
strength  in  human  nature  to  retrace ;  involv-  ' 
ing  themselves  by  their  own  mad  act  in  all 


46 

the  worst  evils  to  which  flesh  is  heir,  wretched 
poverty,  cruel  disease,  irreparable  infamy, 

'  all  the  fiercer  tortures  of  the  mind, 

*  Unbounded  passion,  madness,  guilt,  remorse,' 

and  spreading  through  the  domestick  and  the 
social  sphere,  as  far  as  their  influence  reaches, 
the  fellowship  of  their  own  woes.  If  we  are 
christians,  we  can  scarcely  think  without 
shuddering  sensibility,  of  thousands  of  immor- 
tals killing  the  religious  being  within  them  ; 
divesting  themselves  of  their  congeniality  with 
spiritual  and  heavenly  natures ;  becoming  like 
to  the  beasts  that  perish  in  all  except  those 
diversldes  of  presumptuous  guilt  which  the 
beasts  cannot  imitate,  and  that  responsibleness 
whose  penalties  await  them  at  the  judgment 
seat  of  a  deeply  ofiended  God.  My  friends, 
as  lovers  of  men,  and  as  lovers  of  God,  let  us 
ask  ourselves,  have  we  any  thing  to  do,  to 
arrest  this  sweeping  current  of  evil.  Some 
of  us  have  wealth,  some  station,  some  author- 
ity of  some  kind.  Those  of  us  who  can  do 
no  more,  can  set  an  example,  and  no  good 


47 

example  was  ever  lost.  What  can  we  do, 
what  is  the  most  we  can  do,  with  all  strenuous 
endeavours  in  our  power,  in  this  emergency  ? 
Let  the  question  be  weighed  by  each  one  of 
us  with  solicitude,  solemnity,  and  prayer  ;  and 
may  God,  the  source  of  wisdom,  enlighten  us 
with  a  reply,  that  where  there  is  such  a  call 
for  prudent,  combined,  and  vigorous  effort, 
no  one's  aid  may  be  wanting  who  has  any  aid 
to  lend. 


PROVERBS   XX.    1. 

Strong  drink  is  raging,  and  whosoever  is  deceived 
thereby  is  not  wise. 

When  I  entered  on  the  subject  of  the  pre- 
vailing excess  in  drinking,  I  had  no  expecta- 
tion of  being  led  to  pursue  it  to  such  a  length. 
But  if  it  has  been  the  effect  of  our  reflections 
to  satisfy  us,  that  a  most  serious  evil  now 
weighs  on  this  community,  afflicting  it  and 
threatening  it  with  a  host  of  evils  more,  we 
cannot  wish  to  dismiss  the  subject  till  we  have 
asked  where  the  sources  of  the  mischief  lie, 
and  whether  and  where  any  remedy  is  to  be 
found.  To  the  first  of  these  inquiries  I  at 
this  time  solicit  your  attention.  That  strong 
drink  is  raging,  and  that  whosoever  is  de- 
ceived thereby  is  not  wise,  we  need  no  further 
to  be  shewn.  But^we  desire  to  see  how  it  is 
that  so  many  are  in  fact  deceived  thereby. 

1.  Various  causes  of  this  excess  may  be 
assigned,  as  each  operating  in  numerous  cases. 


49 

1.  For  instance,  uneasiness  of  mind  is  fre- 
quently seen  to  lead  to  it.  Bereavement, 
embarrassed  circumstances,  remorse,  disap- 
pointed love  or  ambition,  domestick  trials, 
make  a  man's  life  a  burden  to  him,  and 
prompt  him  to  seek  a  temporary  cheerfulness 
by  artificial  means.  His  mind  is  relieved  and 
exalted  by  the  physical  excitement,  but  with 
returning  sobriety  comes  an  hour  made  sad- 
der by  the  addition  of  nervous  debility  and  a 
sense  of  degradation,  and  he  is  driven  again 
by  a  stronger  impulse  to  the  same  expedient. 
The  consequences  of  each  successive  indul- 
gence urge  with  added  force  to  a  repetition 
of  the  like,  and  the  indissoluble  chains  of  the 
habit  are  locked.  This  is  the  case  on  which 
the  pity  the  world  bestows  is  mingled  most 
with  tenderness,  and  least  with  contempt. 
But  what  an  humbling  thought  it  is,  that  the 
sufferings  of  sentiment,  often  of  the  most  pure 
and  generous  kind,  shall  impel  men  to  the 
grossest  gratifications  of  sense,  and  subdue 
them  to  its  meanest  thraldom.     How  tenfold 


50 

cruel  are  they  when  they  tempt  the  distress 
they  create,  to  rush  for  relief  into  the  arms  of 
the  worst  dishonour. 

2.  A  land  and  friendly  disposition^  again, 
it  is  grievous  to  say,  is  often  seen  leading  to 
the  same  consequence.  How  well  established 
a  connexion  of  this  sort,  has  been  experienced 
by  those  who  speak  our  language,  to  exist, 
may  be  seen,  for  example,  in  a  word  in  use 
among  them.  Conviviality,  according  to  its 
construction,  means  companionship,  friendly 
intercourse  in  society.  In  its  well  known  ac- 
ceptation, it  denotes,  free  drinking  together. 
Within  certain  limits  of  the  excitement  thus 
produced,  its  effect  on  a  mind  disposed  by  the 
presence  of  friends  to  a  friendly  tone,  is  to 
give  warmth  to  the  social  feelings,  and  open 
the  heart  to  sincerity  by  removing  the  re- 
straints, which  a  wise  or  a  selfish  prudence 
had  imposed.  Wo  to  him  who  to  any  pe- 
culiar strength  of  the  amiable  dispositions 
which  prompt  men  to  seek  society,  adds  any 
peculiar  power  to  make  his  own  desirable, 


51 

unless  he  have  cares,  or  fixed  habits,  or  root- 
ed principles,  to  meet  the  trials  to  which  he 
will  be  probably  exposed.  A  talent  to  enter- 
tain is  a  most  portentous  gift  to  a  man  without 
firm  virtue,  and  with  time  to  spare.  Com- 
pany seeks  and  caresses  him.  His  hour  of 
triumph  is  his  hour  of  revelry.  Amidst  its 
freedom,  his  wit  is  brightest  and  most  ap- 
plauded, and  his  heart  is  fullest  in  its  song. 
He  thinks  that  good  fellowship  attracts  him  by 
its  intellectual  and  honest  joys,  and  perhaps 
does  not  suspect  himself  to  be  solicited  by 
appetite,  till  he  has  too  good  reason  to  know 
that  he  is  a  bond  slave  to  it.  '  O  that  we 
should,'  says  one  of  the  characters  of  the 
great  dramatist,  '  with  joy,  revel,  pleasure, 
and  applause,  transform  ourselves  into  beasts.' 
He  follows  that  broad  way  that  leadeth  to 
destruction,  whereat  there  be  so  many  which 
go  in,  and  when  his  doom  is  sealed,  when  the 
accomplishments  that  brought  his  fall,  have 
shared  in  it,  and  the  more  prudent  associates 
of  his  days  of  flattered  folly  do  not  recognise 


52 

his  altered  form,  he  derives  what  satisfaction 
he  may  from  knowing  what  all  will  say, — that 
be  was  nobody's  enemy  but  his  own  ; — that 
it  was  his  good  heart  that  ruined  him. 

3.  Want  of  occupation,  itself,  apart  from 
the  dangers  of  society  incident  to  it,  is  fruitful 
of  temptation  in  this  respect.  The  human 
mind  is  so  made,  as  to  demand  excitement. 
Repose,  if  one  may  use  such  an  expression, 
is  an  uneasy  state  to  it.  Without  something 
to  engage  and  stimulate  it,  it  preys  upon  itself. 
Wisely  was  it  so  constituted,  for  by  this  im- 
pulse, its  author  designed  that  it  should  be 
driven  to  seek  excitement  in  useful  occupa- 
tion. From  that  state  of  depression,  which, 
to  those  who  do  not  so  occupy  it,  is  its  natural 
state,  it  is  but  too  likely  to  have  recourse  for 
relief,  to  the  pernicious  indulgence  on  which 
we  are  discoursing.  No  one,  who  has  not 
some  employment,  is,  in  the  existing  state  of 
things,  safe  against  it.  Dispensation  from 
labour  is  continually  experienced  to  be  ruin- 
ous, to  that  class  in  the  community,  who  are 


53 

little  acquainted  with  intellectual  pleasures; 
and  he,  whose  worldly  concerns  do  not  de- 
mand his  care,  is  a  subject  of  concern,  unless 
he  has  resources  in  plans  or  offices  of  service 
to  others,  or  in  a  taste  for  the  cultivation  of 
his  own  mind. 

II.  We  might  add  to  such  subordinate 
causes  of  intemperance,  but  it  would  be  to  no 
purpose.  For  what  is  it  for  which  these,  and 
other  such,  account?  Plainly  for  nothing 
more  than  this.  For  the  difference  between 
the  moderate  and  the  immoderate  use  of  the 
means  of  intoxication.  And  this  needs  no 
accounting  for.  It  sufficiently  explains  itself. 
Particular  causes,  such  as  have  been  touched 
upon,  may  lead  to  excess  in  particular  instan- 
ces ;  but  without  the  appearance  of  any  such 
causes,  the  phenomenon  is  fully  solved.  The 
fact  is,  that  spirituous  liquors  possess  the  re- 
markable, the  mysterious  property  to  practise 
on  minds,  otherwise  most  clear  and  wary, 
that  deception  of  which  our  text  calls  the  sub- 
ject unwise.       Administered  to  the  human 


54 

constitution,  they  so  affect  it  as  to  dispose  it 
powerfully  to  an  excessive  indulgence  in 
them.  When  a  relish  for  them  has  once 
been  formed,  they  urgently  invite  the  appetite 
to  overstep  the  limits  of  a  strict  temperance, 
and  when  that  step  has  been  taken,  they  have 
depraved  the  appetite.  They  have  created 
an  unnatural  craving,  which  growing  continu- 
ally as  it  is  fed,  hurries  the  victim  on  with  a 
strength  which  is  all  but  irresistible.  I  do 
not  undertake  to  describe  the  physical  process. 
That  would  be  the  subject  of  another  kind  of 
treatise.  But  I  speak  nothing  but  most  pain- 
fully famihar  truth,  when  I  say,  that  with 
more  certainty  than  vaccination  changes  the 
constitution,  so  that  the  subject  cannot  suffer 
from  that  disorder  against  which  it  is  a  safe- 
guard, a  certain  degree  of  indulgence  in 
drinking,  towards  which  every  degree  of  in- 
dulgence tends,  so  alters  the  constitution,  that 
the  subject  cannot  again  be  a  temperate  man. 
We  know  of  nothing  which  so  takes  away  the 
freedom  of  the  will.     A  certain  point  passed, 


55 

which  no  one  is  conscious >of  having  approach- 
ed, till  it  is  passed,  and  to  all  human  expecta- 
tion, though  not  indeed  to  human  effort,  he 
must  be  given  up  as  lost.  It  is  all  but  certain, 
that  he  is  soon  to  go  down  to  his  grave  a  dis- 
honoured, undone  man.  Motives  are  no 
longer  any  thing  to  him.  Dread  of  disease 
and  want  in  their  most  revolting  forms ; 
shame;  pity  for  his  best  friends;  fear  and 
hope  of  a  hereafter, — to  all  that  can  touch  a 
manly  heart,  and  that  once  touched  his,  to  all 
he  is  as  insensible  as  a  rock.  The  relentless 
demon  has  clutched  his  prey,  and  will  drag 
it  down  to  his  place.  I  do  not  say  that  there 
have  not  been  instances  of  reform,  when  hope 
was  gone.  But  they  are  so  contrary  to  com- 
mon experience,  that  we  hear  of  them  almost 
with  the  same  incredulity  that  we  hear  of 
apparitions  from  the  invisible  world,  and  sto- 
ries of  one  and  of  the  other,  which  we  under- 
take to  trace,  generally  turn  out  to  be  equally 
unfounded. 

The  frequent  excess  then,  in  the  use  of  ar- 
4 


66 

dent  spirits,  is  sufficiently  accounted  for,  by 
their  own  nature,  wherever  they  are  in  gene- 
ral use  at  all,  as  much  as  it  would  be  account- 
ed for,  where  a  fever  should  spread,  that  many, 
from  individual  circumstances  of  constitution 
or  exposure,  should  have  it  severely  and  die. 
And  this  then,  is  what  I  maintain ;  that  it  is 

THE  PREVAILING  USE  OF  ARDENT  SPIRITS, 
WHICH  IS  CHARGEABLE  WITH  THE  FRE- 
QUENT IMMODERATE    USE    OF  THEM.       Their 

use  is  reputable  and  general,  and  therefore 
it  is,  that  their  fatal  use  is  common.  Is  it  not 
so  ?  Those  who  are  from  time  to  time  break- 
ing from  the  ranks  and  going  over  into  the 
class  of  intemperate  persons,  are  we  not  sure 
that  it  was  in  each  of  them  the  less  indul- 
gence, which  challenged  no  blame,  that  led  to 
the  greater,  which  is  infamous  and  destruc- 
tive ?  Going  further  back,  can  we  entertain 
the  smallest  doubt,  that  it  was  the  unquestion- 
ed customs  of  society,  that  brought  them  first 
wnthin  the  sphere  of  that  influence,  which  is 
about  to  be  thus  consummated  ?     The  infant 


57 

loathes  distilled  spirits.  So  does  the  man,  if 
his  taste  has  not  been  won  to  them  by  palata- 
ble mixtures ;  by  use,  in  the  first  place,  from 
some  imagined  necessity, — to  his  health,  for 
instance ;  by  example  ;  or  by  some  associa- 
tions of  the  mind.  And  even  in  those  instances 
where  a  specifick  temptation  to  excessive  in- 
dulgence can  be  named,  it  accounts,  as  has 
been  said,  for  nothing  but  the  excess,  and  not 
for  that  more  guarded  indulgence,  to  which 
the  excess  relates,  and  without  which,  as  a 
preparation,  it  would  not,  in  any  case,  have 
existed.  Why  did  the  boon  companion  make 
merry  with  his  friends  with  liquor ;  why  not 
with  exhilarating  gas,  which  would  have 
made  them  happier  while  under  its  effects, 
and  left  them  happier  when  its  effects  sub- 
sided ?  Why  did  he  who  felt  the  smart  of  a 
wounded  spirit,  and  he  who  was  harassed  by 
vacuity  of  mind,  not  have  recourse  to  the 
poppy's  juices?  They  are  a  better  sedative, 
are  more  conveniently  administered,  and  lap 
the  sick  soul  in  a  more  glorious  elysium  of 


58 

the  fancy.  This  is  a  Turk's  medicine  for  ^  a 
mind  diseased.'  Why  is  it  not  a  Christian's  ? 
There  is  but  one  answer.  It  is  because 
the  gas  was  out  of  the  way,  a  thing  almost 
unknown,  hidden  in  the  chemist's  laboratory ; 
and  the  opium  was  out  of  the  way,  among 
the  apothecary's  secret  stores;  neither  of 
them  substances  familiar  to  the  habits  of  so- 
ciety, and  included  in  the  economy  of  daily 
life.  The  ardent  spirit  was  in  the  way,  and 
not  to  be  sought  beyond  where  friends  meet, 
and  families  dwell,  and  individuals  for  their 
various  purposes  resort,  and  the  crowds  of 
business  and  pleasure  '  most  do  congregate.' 
All  comes  to  the  same  point ;  namely,  that  ar- 
dent spirits  are  so  often  used  to  excess,  be- 
cause they  are  in  general  use  among  us, 
meeting  us  at  every  turn,  and  because  with 
or  without  what  in  the  individual  case  we  call 
cause,  it  is  to  excess  in  frequent  instances,  that, 
when  generally  used  at  all,  they  tend  with  a 
powerful  urgency.  Every  where  men  meet 
with  them,  and,  meeting  with  them,  men  are 


59 

constitutionally  liable  to  become  their  prey* 
This  is  not  necessary,  and  many  in  fact  es- 
cape. Numbers  who  use  them,  it  is  needless 
to  say,  are  men  without  a  blot.  But  what  do 
we  thence  infer  ?  We  might  master  a  lion 
who  should  waylay  us ;  but  a  country  infest- 
ed with  lions,  would  not  therefore  cease  to  be 
dangerous  to  live  in. — What,  let  us  ask,  has 
established  that  habit  of  society,  which  in- 
volves so  much  danger,  and  actually  pro- 
duces, year  by  year,  so  much  wo  ? 

1.  Partly,  it  may  be  supposed,  the  opinion^ 
which  we  often  hear  expressed,  that  ardent 
spirits  are  efficacious  infrequent  exigencies  of 
the  health.  Is  a  person  chilled ;  they  are  the 
common  prescription  to  warm  him.  Is  he 
heated ;  they  will  refresh  him.  Is  he  fa- 
tigued in  body,  they  will  bring  back  strength  ; 
or  in  mind,  they  will  restore  tone  and  cheer- 
fulness. Has  he  taken  cold,  they  will  expel 
it.  Is  he  to  be  exposed  to  take  cold,  they 
are  that  preventive,  a  litde  of  which  is  bet- 
ter than  much  cure.  Are  his  nerves  shaken, 
4^ 


60 

they  wUl  compose  them.  Is  his  blood  sluggish, 
they  will  stir  it.*  It  would  seem,  to  hear  their 
virtues  successively  set  forth,  that  the  alchy- 
mists  might  break  their  crucibles,  for  the  pana- 
cea was  found.  I  shall  not  undertake  to  say, 
that  there  are  not  constitutions  which  they 
may  benefit,  when  those  constitutions  have 
become  inured  to  the  sparing  use  of  them. 
I  shall  not  deny  that  there  may  be  other  pe- 
culiar constitutions  to  which,  without  the  self- 
created  demand  of  previous  use,  they  may 
be  sei-viceable  ;  though  I  should  think  it  not 
amiss  in  persons  possessing  such,  to  resolve 
that  they  will  resort  to  them,  as  they  would 
to  mercury  or  hemlock,  or  any  of  the  most 

*  In  respect  to  morning  drinking,  there  has  been,  in 
this  quarter,  a  manifest  improvement  in  the  present 
generation.  Thirty  years  ago,  grave,  honourable,  yea, 
reverend  gentlemen,  were  habitually  thirsty  at  eleven 
o'clock.  I  have  heard  it  said,  however,  that  the  use  of 
herb  julaps,  as  they  are  called,  is  travelling  towards 
the  north.  It  is  most  devoutly  to  be  hoped,  that  the 
fashion  of  this  morning  prophylactick  is  not  destined 
to  pass  the  New  England  border. 


61 

unsafe  materials  of  the  healing  art, — that  is, 
under  the  strict  guidance  of  professional  wis- 
dom. But  full  often  has  the  conscientious 
physician  seen  cause  to  rue  the  day,  when  he 
gave  for  the  medicine  of  the  body,  what  prov- 
ed in  the  result,  the  bane  of  the  soul ;  and  if 
not  one  of  the  most  brilliant  recent  discoveries 
of  medical  science,  because  not  made  of  a 
sudden,  still  one  of  the  most  valuable  is,  that 
distilled  liquors  are  rarely  applicable  to  medi- 
cinal uses ; — a  conviction  which  is  becoming 
firmer  and  extending  itself  every  day,  with 
the  progress  of  the  art,  and  the  collations  of 
different  experience.^  It  is  a  maxim  now 
among  the  professional  men  in  the  severely 
warm  climates  of  the  East  and  West  Indies, 
that '  spirituous  liquors,  whether  used  habitu- 
ally, moderately,  or  in  excessive  quantities, 
always  diminish  in  the  same  degree  the  vital 
strength,  and  render  men  more  susceptible  of 

*  The  piaictice  of  administering  medicine  in  spirituous 
vehicles,  by  which  great  harm  has  been  done,  is,  now, 
I  am  told,  in  great  part  discontinued. 
4t 


62 

disease ;'  and  the  same  is  the  result  of  the 
experience  of  our  southern  cities.* — It  is  not 
artificial  stimulus  that  gives  strength,  but  na- 
tural food.  All  observation  and  experiment 
go  to  show  it.  Would  it  not  have  been 
strange,  if  God,  who  meant  man  to  have 
strength  to  labour  and  endure,  should  have 
designed  him  to  derive  it,  not  from  the  sub- 
stantial fruits  of  the  earth,  but  from  a  curious 
extract  of  art  ?  Would  it  not  have  been  out 
of  all  analogy  ?  What  other  animal  is  so 
nourished  ?  Do  you  strengthen  the  hard- 
working horse  or  ox  with  the  simple  grain, 
or  with  the  intoxicating  essence  you  obtain 
from  it ;  and  if  it  were  prepared  for  their  diet 
as  it  is  for  that  of  their  driver,  would  they 
serve  him  so  well  or  so  long  as  they  do  ?  The 


*  *  They  dispose  to  every  form  of  acute  disease.  They 
moreover  excite  fevers  in  persons  predisposed  to  them 
from  other  causes.  This  has  been  remarked  in  all  the 
yellow  fevers  which  have  visited  the  cities  of  the  United 
States.  Hard  drinkers  seldom  escape,  and  scarcely  ever 
recover  from  them.' — Rush's  Inquiry,  p.  8. 


63 

Roman  soldiers,  who  overran  the  world,  drank 
vinegar  and  water.  In  the  parent  country, 
training  for  athletick  exercises,  demanding 
the  greatest  attainable  power  of  action  and 
endurance,  is  reduced  to  a  regular  science. 
The  subjects  of  it  are  a  class  of  men,  little 
influenced  by  moral  considerations.  Their 
discipline  is  merely  a  discipline  to  bring  the 
human  machine  to  its  maximum  of  exertion 
of  activity  and  force ;  and  one  of  its  rules,  it 
is  said,  founded  on  the  nicest  observation  and 
full  experience,  is  an  utter  prohibition  of  the 
use  of  spirituous  liquors."^  There  can  be  lit- 
tle doubt,  that,  taking  the  twenty-four  hours 
together,  the  temporary  excitement  produced 
by  ardent  spirits  does  not  compensate  the 
succeeding  languor  ;  and  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that,  other  things  being  equal,  the  per- 
sons who  abstain  from  them  through  their 
lives,  have  essentially  greater  strength  of  body 

*  See  on  this  subject,  Dr.  Bradford's  Address  before 
the  Massachusetts  Society  for  the  Suppression  of  In- 
temperance. 


64 

and  mind,  and  are  happier,  and  longer  lived. 
In  cases  of  extreme  hardship,  such  as  cold, 
watching,  and  fatigue  in  war,  it  has  appeared 
that  the  most  temperate  have  been  the  most 
able  to  endure  ;  and  in  shipwrecks,  in  ninety- 
nine  cases  in  a  hundred,  it  has  not  been  the 
seemingly  hardy  sailors,  used  to  all  kinds  of 
exposure,  who  have  suffered  least,  but  their 
officers,  more  delicately  reared,  more  used  to 
comforts  and  indulgencies,  but  who,  from  the 
sense  of  their  responsibleness  for  the  safety 
of  the  rest,  have  abstained  from  their  excesses. 
It  has  even  been  ascertained  to  be  an  errour, 
that  there  is  danger  to  life,  in  wholly  and  of  a 
sudden  discontinuing  the  use  of  ardent  spirits, 
in  cases  where  it  has  been  the  most  immode- 
rate. The  patient  in  such  cases,  undergoes  a 
disease  which,  among  its  subjects,  is  denomi- 
nated the  horrours,  and  which  has  been 
thought  to  be  in  its  nature  fatal,  unless  the  cus- 
tomary stimulus  were  supplied.  He  is  thrown 
into  the  most  miserable  condition  of  bodily 
and   mental  imbecility.      He  cannot   sleep. 


^5 

He  sees  all  sorts  of  frightful  phantoms  of  the 
imagination  in  a  crowd  around  him,  with  the 
distinctness  and  certainty  of  actual  sense; 
and  sustains,  in  short,  all  agonies  of  terrour. 
The  fit  comes  on  after  a  day  of  abstinence, 
lasts  sometimes  four  days,  though  commonly 
less  than  two,  and  leaves  the  body  and  mind 
feeble,  but  without  disease.  I  mention  it  as 
greatly  to  the  honour  of  the  physician  of  the 
House  of  Correction  in  this  city,"^  that,  pro- 
ceeding with  a  judgment  and  courage  that 
justified  each  the  other,  he  has  established  the 
common  opinion  concerning  the  needful  palli- 
ative in  this  case,  to  be  groundless.  Of  two 
hundred  and  fifty  patients,  with  whom  he  has 
enforced  total  abstinence,  he  has  lost  not  one. 
2.  Another  cause  of  that  general  use  of  ar- 
dent spirits,  which  in  its  turn  is  the  cause  of 
their  excessive  use,  is  their  instituted  connex- 
ion^ in  the  minds  and  habits  of  a  great  portion 

*  Dr.  Joshua  B.  Flint.  I  understand  that  the  same 
course  has  also  been  taken,  and  with  an  equally  satis- 
factory result,  in  the  state's  prison  at  Charlestown. 


66 

of  the  people,  ivith  the  intercourse  of  friend- 
ship, and  the  duties  of  hospitality.  It  is  hard 
to  account  for  the  origin  of  the  different  usages 
of  different  nations.  This  happens  to  be  ours. 
The  Asiatick  gives  his  guests  and  his  friends 
presents  to  carry  away.  The  Frenchman 
entertains  with  his  ices  and  his  coffee ;  the 
Indian  with  his  pipe ;  the  Italian  with  his  gar- 
dens, his  pictures,  and  his  rausick,  without 
any  thing  to  satisfy  hunger  or  thirst,  taking  it 
for  granted  that,  as  to  these  wants,  his  guests 
have  provided  for  themselves  at  home.  We 
of  the  English  race  shew  our  good  will  with 
what  we  call  good  cheer;  another  phrase 
which  speaks  our  sense  of  a  connexion  be- 
fore referred  to  ;  for  cheer  in  its  original  sig- 
nification means  gayety  and  spirit;  in  that 
which  it  has  acquired  through  our  habits,  it 
means  meat  and  drink.  The  connexion  is  by  no 
means  altogether  arbitrary.  Eating  and  drink- 
ing together  is  a  natural  and  proper  sign  enough 
of  concord,  and  under  different  modifications 
has  perhaps  been  so  considered  at  all  times. 


67 

The  temperate  participation  of  them  itself 
elevates  the  spirits,  and  the  seasons  for  them 
are  naturally  enough  chosen  as  the  seasons  for 
social  interviews.  Besides  vv^hich,  they  give 
opportunity  to  the  offerer  to  shew  his  friend- 
ship by  a  trifling  act  of  generosity,  which  is 
likely  to  be  kindly  taken.  Why,  in  this 
character  of  a  courteous  and  hospitable  offer- 
ing, provision  for  thirst  has  so  taken  pre- 
cedence of  provision  for  hunger,  is  not  so 
clear.  Perhaps  it  is  because  the  former  is 
more  readily  at  hand,  and  soonest  prepared 
and  disposed  of.  Perhaps,  because  the  ex- 
citement of  animal  spirits  produced  by  it  is 
more  quickly  obtained  and  in  a  higher  de- 
gree. But  however  this  may  be,  the  fact  is, 
that  the  offer  of  stimulating  liquid  of  some 
form  is  in  this  and  the  parent  country  the  cus- 
tomary offer  of  courtesy,  in  most  classes  of 
society.  Among  the  citizens  of  the  parent 
country,  it  is  not  so  generally  made  in  the  form 
of  distilled  spirits,  because,  happily  for  them, 
that  product  is  exceedingly  dear  ;  happily  for 


them,  at  least,  it  would  be,  if  the  strong  ap- 
petite for  the  exciting  essence  did  not  lead 
them  to  secure  it  by  consuming  greater  quan- 
tities of  products  which  contain  it  in  a  less 
concentrated  form.  Here,  on  the  contrary, 
they  are  exceedingly  cheap ;  so  much  so, 
that  I  suppose  it  would  be  speaking  within 
bounds,  to  say  that  with  the  fruits  of  the  la- 
bour of  one  day  in  the  week,  a  man  might 
keep  himself  completely  brutalized  and  help- 
less by  them  during  the  remaining  six.  The 
consequence  is  they  are  within  the  perfectly 
convenient  reach  of  every  individual,  who  de- 
sires to  have  them  to  use  or  to  bestow ;  and  this 
fully  explains,  why,  in  the  intercourse  of  the 
great  majority  of  persons  in  this  community, 
they  should  have  established  a  preference  to 
be  the  customary  token  of  that  good  will, 
which  some  offering  to  the  palate  is  looked 
for  to  testify.  Such,  at  any  rate,  they  now 
are  among  us  ;  and  this  being  so,  when  they 
are  always  stored  on  the  shelf  of  the  house- 
holder, and  held  to  the  visitor's  lips, — when 


69 

they  are  at  hand  in  every  place  of  amusement^ 
or  of  bargaining,  or  of  service,  to  seal  every 
contract,  and  renew  every  acquaintance,  and 
requite  every  good  turn, — when  one  must  of- 
fer, and  therefore  must  taste,  and  the  other 
must  accept,  or  be  reckoned  churlish,  what 
wonder  that  that  use  of  them  should  be  pre- 
vailing and  habitual,  out  of  which  a  perni- 
cious use  is  so  certain  in  numerous  cases  to 
grow  ? 

3.  I  might  therefore  name  the  cheapness 
of  ardent  spirits  among  us  as  a  third  cause  of 
their  general  use,  but  it  blends  itself  with  the 
other  two.  Because  they  are  thought  desira- 
ble for  nourishment  and  medicine,  and  com- 
fort and  companionship,  and  because  they  are 
cheaply  had,  they  are  every  where  to  be 
found,  provided  for  these  purposes ;  and, — 
being  so  used  (without  the  restraint  of  costli- 
ness) for  these,  whenever  they  are  imagined 
to  occur, — they  actually  run,  in  frequent  in- 
stances, into  that  excess,  to  which,  of  their 
nature,  they  strongly  tend.     Again  ;  being  so 


70 

freely  provided  for  these  uses,  they  are  ready 
to  serve  any  other  not  comprehended  in  these. 
Make  any  expedient  frequent  and  agreeable, 
and  you  need  give  no  other  reason  for  a  re- 
sort to  it  which  shall  be  causeless,  unexcused 
and  constant.  Reversing  the  la\v^  of  econo- 
micks,  the  supply  creates  the  demand.  It  is 
furnished  to  serve  many  uses,  and,  being  fur- 
nished, it  suggests  itself  and  is  found  applicable 
for  all.  Thus  ardent  spirits  have  extensively 
established  their  place  among  the  regular  pro- 
visions of  families,  and  on  the  table  of  daily 
repast.  Along  with  the  common  means  of 
sustenance,  they  are  in  the  sight  of  children, 
and  sometimes  without  doubt  at  their  lips, 
diluted  and  sweetened  at  first  so  as  not  to  of- 
fend their  taste.  They  come  with  not  a  few 
to  stand  almost  in  the  place  of  food,  nay,  one 
might  say,  of  shelter,  fire,  and  raiment.  No 
where  are  they  out  of  place.  They  menace 
with  their  serpent's  bite,  they  brandish  their 
adder's  sting,  in  meetings  for  sacred  duties, 
nay,  in  meetings  for  funeral  sorrow.     Are  we 


71 

to  expect  to  be  thus  continually  confronting 
such  a  reptile,  and  never  to  feel  its  fang  ?^ 

There  is  another  way  in  which  the  supply 
creates  the  demand.  It  is  in  the  multipli- 
cation of  houses  licensed  for  the  sale  of 
ardent   spirits  by   retail.     There    are   more 


*  A  little  girl  at  one  of  the  primary  schools,  after  re- 
peating the  letters  of  the  word  coffee,  hesitated  to  pro- 
nounce it.  *  What  does  your  mother  get  for  your  break- 
fast ? '  asked  the  mistress,  by  way  of  helping  her.  The 
child  promptly  answered  '  Rum.'  A  female  domestick, 
thirteen  or  fourteen  years  old,  after  visiting  her  parents, 
was  observed  to  come  home  intoxicated,  and  on  inquiry 
it  was  found  that  ardent  spirits  were  given  her  at  that 
repast,  of  which  tea  is  commonly  the  provision.  These 
are  only  two  examples,  which  I  happen  lately  to  have 
heard,  of  what  most  persons  know,  that  spirituous  li- 
quors are  instar  omnium  with  many  families  among 
our  population.  In  the  course  of  some  inquiries  into 
the  state  of  the  poor  in  Charlestown  within  a  few  win- 
ters, three  or  four  little  children,  from  infancy  upwards, 
were  found  huddled  together  in  a  miserable  bed,  in  the 
dead  sleep  of  drunkenness.  Their  mother  said  that 
being  destitute  of  means  to  feed,  clothe,  or  warm  them 
properly,  she  quieted  them,  when  they  woke,  with  a 
new  dose  of  liquor. 


72 

dangerous  places  of  resort  than  these,  no 
doubt.  It  appears  from  time  to  time  on  the 
records  of  our  courts,  that  there  are  haunts 
of  intemperance  furnished  for  the  greater  al- 
lurement with  means  of  gambling,  and  other 
seductions  ;  and  lately  there  was  brought  to 
light  a  den  of  wickedness,  where  an  intoxicatr 
ing  mixture,  till  now  unknown,  of  pernicious 
drugs,  was  prepared,  chiefly,  as  it  appeared 
for  children, — the  best  nursery,  hitherto  disco- 
vered, of  those  offenders  of  tender  age,  who 
month  by  month,  are  convicted  under  the  stat- 
ute against  common  drunkards.*   But  I  speak 

*  A  child  was  brought  up  for  stealing  a  watch,  under 
complaint  of  the  keeper  of  this  establishment,  who,  it 
appeared,  had  crazed  him  by  administering  this  prepara- 
tion, to  which,  in  evidence,  he  gave  the  name  of  Tom 
and  Jerry.  The  court  held  the  landlord  to  be  most 
culpable,  and  under  its  direction  an  uncommonly  re- 
spectable jury  acquitted  the  little  wretch. 

In  the  case  of  most  of  the  juvenile  offenders  charged 
in  the  police  court  with  assaults  and  other  disturbances 
of  the  peace,  it  appears  on  examination  that  the  excite- 
ment of  ardent  spirits  was  the  origin  of  their  offence, 
and  children  apprehended  for  pilfering  are  not  uncom- 
monly brought  before  the  magistrates  intoxicated. 


73 

not  of  these,  but  of  resorts  which  break  no  law. 
It  is  enough  for  serious  detriment  to  the  publick 
morals,  that  numerous  opportunities  should  be 
furnished  to  intemperance,  to  put  out  of  view 
all  other  excitement.  Under  the  present  vigi- 
lant administration  of  our  city  government, 
there  are  no  less  than  five  hundred  and  eighty 
licensed  tenements,  nearly  all  of  them  having 
licenses  as  victualing  houses,  and  accordingly 
being  authorized  to  sell  liquors  in  the  smallest 
quantities,  to  be  drunken  upon  the  premises ; 
and  most  of  them  too  being  the  same  places 
where  groceries  and  other  requisites  of  a  fa- 
mily are  obtained,  so  that  they  present  the 
temptation  to  the  view  when  visited  with  a 
different  purpose,  and  make  it  convenient  to 
take  the  change  of  money  paid  for  other  com- 
modities, in  ardent  spirits.  Five  hundred 
and  eighty  licensed  houses ;  one  licensed 
house  to  every  sixteen  not  licensed ;  one 
licensed  house  to  every  thirty-four  male  citi- 
zens over  sixteen  years  of  age.  The  weather 
5 


74 

must  be  inclement  which  can  part  an  idle  per- 
son from  his  cups,  when  at  the  worst  the  chance 
is  that  he  may  enjoy  them,  and  with  them  a  cir- 
cle of  congenial  society,  within  sixteen  doors 
of  his  own.  A  labouring  man  must  choose 
his  way  well,  who  in  going  a  mile  from  his 
work  to  his  home,  should  not  pass  a  hundred 
points  where  his  virtue  is  thus  tried.  After 
every  sixteenth  house,  on  an  average,  as  he 
goes,  the  means  of  vicious  indulgence  are  pre- 
sented to  him,  not  improbably  with  the  added 
inducement  of  the  sight  of  some  acquaintance 
partaking  of  them. 

^  Such  are  some  of  the  causes,  more  and  less 
prominent,  of  the  great  evil  we  have  been  la- 
menting. Let  their  reality  be  well  examined 
and  weighed.  It  is  much  more  easy  to  de- 
tect their  existence  than  to  devise  their  reme- 
dies. Yet  let  not  even  that  be  despaired  of. 
To  find  and  apply  them  is  a  great  and  good 
work.     It  is  but  just  begun,  and  it  is  too  early 


75 

for  discouragement  to  await  it.  Let  men  do 
their  part,  and,  in  his  own^good  time,  through 
the  providential  teaching  of  experience,  a 
wisdom  from  God  will  explain  the  means  of 
success,  and  an  energy  from  God  will  use 
them. 


1  CORINTHIANS,  VIII.  13. 

If  meat  make  my  brother  to  offend,  I  will  eat  no  flesh 
while  the  world  standeth,  lest  I  make  my  brother  to  of- 
fend. 

We  have  attended  to  some  statements,  re- 
lating to  the  appalling  consequences,  here  and 
hereafter,  of  the  vice  of  intemperate  drink- 
ing ;  the  extent  to  which  it  prevails  in  our 
community ;  the  loss  and  disturbance  which 
the  publick  suffers  from  it,  and  the  dangers 
with  which  it  threatens  even  so  stable  a  thing 
as  our  political  institutions.  We  have  also 
made  some  inquiry  into  the  causes  which  lead 
to  the  destructive  indulgence. 

So  far,  our  way  was  sufficiently  plain.  We 
had  only  to  use  our  senses,  and  we  could  not 
fail  to  see  it.  We  approach  now  a  much  more 
difficult  question.  What  can  be  done  to  stay 
this  torrent  of  wo  and  death ;  to  stop   this 


77 

overflowing  fountain  of  private  and  publick 
ruin  ? 

I.  The  readiest  way  would  seem  to  be  to 
invoke  the  authority  of  law.  It  is  by  laws, 
with  suitable  penalties  annexed,  that  in  other 
cases  the  community  provides  for  the  perma- 
nence of  its  institutions,  and  protects  the  in- 
nocent against  invasion  from  the  guilty. 

1 .  For  such  protection  we  look,  in  the  first 
instance,  to  the  parental  government  of  our 
own  commonwealth.  Our  ancestors,  in  the 
first,  and  the  early  part  of  the  second  century 
of  our  history,  thought  this  a  proper  field  for 
the  operation  of  legal  restraints.  Two  great 
features  of  their  legislation  on  the  subject, 
have  since  disappeared.  (1.)  They  made 
each  separate  act  of  drunkenness  indictable 
and  punishable,  as  an  act  of  assault  or  larce- 
ny now  is ;  thus  rendering  it  infamous,  and 
obstructing  that  repetition  of  it,  which  is 
necessary  to  the  forming  of  the  habit.  (2.) 
They  enjoined  on  the  municipal  authorities  to 
prosecute  such  offenders,  and  to  employ  per- 
5^ 


78 

sons  to  inform  against  them,  with  a  compen- 
sation for  their  services ;  thus  refusing  to  rely 
on  the  always  invidious  method  of  private  in- 
formation. They  also,  by  an  act  passed  at  a 
still  earlier  period,  forbade  persons  employing 
workmen,  to  give  them  strong  liquors,  except 
in  cases  of  necessity.  These  provisions  are 
all  done  away.  Our  existing  laws  only  pun- 
ish or  restrain  persons  who  are  proved,  (1.)  to 
be  common  drunkards ;  (2.)  to  be  injuring  or 
endangering  their  health  by  intemperance ; 
(3.)  to  be  exposing  themselves  or  their  fami- 
lies to  become  a  publick  charge  ;  (4.)  to  have 
been  guilty  of  excess  in  a  licensed  house.  It 
is  but  too  probable,  that  whenever  either  of 
these  cases  brings  the  citizen  within  the  reach 
of  the  law,  the  law  finds  him  too  late  for  his 
own  good. 

Was  there  not  reason  in  the  view  which 
our  fathers  took  of  this  subject  ?  Does  it  not 
accord  with  just  principles  of  law,  to  compel 
the  citizen  under  pain  of  its  retributions  to 
keep  sober,  as  much  as  to  compel  him  to  re- 


79 

main  peaceable  or  honest,  provided  his  intem- 
perance injures  other  individuals  and  the 
community,  as  much  as  his  passion  or  his  dis- 
honesty would  injure  them  ?  And  is  not  this 
condition  met  ?  Are  acts  of  violence  or  of 
fraud  often  committed,  which  affect  the  com- 
munity so  injuriously  as  an  example  of  vicious 
excess  ;  and  how  often  do  we  hear  of  such 
an  act,  which  inflicts  on  individuals  so  griev- 
ous a  wrong,  as  is  inflicted  by  intemperance 
on  all  whose  fortunes  or  whose  hearts  are 
bound  to  its  victim  ?  The  lenity  which  lets 
it  pass  unpunished  and  so  emboldens  it,  seems 
no  less  than  just  so  much  cruel  injustice  to 
the  better  part  of  society  ; — oppression  of  the 
innocent  in  subjecting  them  to  ill  treatment 
fi-om  the  guilty,  and  of  the  industrious  in 
compelling  them  to  take  the  burden  of  main- 
taining the  improvident  and  idle.  To  punish 
drunkenness  as  a  crime  in  itself,  has  been  a 
course  often  enough  adopted.  The  Romans 
went  so  far,  as  to  punish  capitally  a  single 
transgression  of  the  kind  by  a  female.  And 
4t 


80 

as  to  encroachments  upon  the  liberties  of  the 
citizen,  the  publick  often  protects  itself,  (and 
is  held  by  all  writers  to  be  justified  by  the 
great  law  of  self-preservation  in  doing  so,)  by 
processes  which  might  far  better  be  reckoned 
encroachments,  applied  to  cases  too,  where 
the  citizen  is  chargeable  with  no  offence 
whatsoever.  Take  the  case  of  the  health 
laws.  A  person  is  attacked  in  one  of  our 
cities  by  a  disease,  supposed  to  be  infectious. 
This  is  no  fault  of  his.  On  the  contrary,  it 
makes  him  a  subject  of  pity.  But,  against 
his  will,  he  must  be  taken  from  the  familiar 
comforts  of  home,  and  the  alleviations  of  do- 
mestick  care,  to  take  his  fate,  whatever  it  may 
be,  in  some  place  unknown,  and  possibly 
odious  to  him.  Repeated  instances  have  oc- 
curred in  this  country,  and  in  former  times  in 
this  town,  in  which  to  the  pain  of  separation, 
and  the  hazard  of  removal, — unavoidable  in- 
conveniences,— has  been  added  the  grievance 
of  exposure  to  a  place,  and  to  circumstances, 
of  peculiar  danger.   With  the  last  winter  there 


81 

occurred  here  a  rare  instance,  if  not  the  first, 
of  an  individual  reputed  to  be  suffering  un- 
der a  contagious  disease,  being  permitted  by 
the  authorities  to  struggle  with  it  quietly  at 
home,  under  sufficient  securities.  By  the 
quarantine  laws  of  most  of  our  cities,  persons 
arriving  from  tropical  climates  or  suspected 
places,  are  required  to  remain  a  certain  num- 
ber of  days,  without  intercourse  with  their 
friends,  whatever  reasons  they  may  have  for 
impatience,  and  under  circumstances  always 
wearisome  and  disagreeable  in  the  extreme. 
This  alone  is  punishment  enough  for  those 
who  have  committed  no  fault,  but  it  has  not 
seldom  happened  that  they  have  also  been 
compelled  to  remain  more  or  less  within  the 
reach  of  infection,  and  incurred  the  conse- 
quences. If  the  good  of  the  whole  rightly 
enforces  such  restraints  on  the  liberty  of  such 
as,  without  any  fault,  might  spread  physical 
pestilence,  has  it  no  privileges  in  respect  to 
the  voluntary  difFuser  of  a  moral  pestilence, 
with    all  its   diversity   of  destructive   conse- 


82 

quences  ;  or  is  the  danger  thus  threatened  to 
be  accounted  less  worthy  of  precautions  ? 

But  I  would  be  as  far  as  any  one  from  de- 
fending any  course  likely  to  infringe  the  just 
freedom  of  the  citizen.  It  may  be,  that  the 
offence  could  not  be  satisfactorily  defined, 
and  that  penal  laws  of  the  kind  in  question, 
might  lead  to  an  oppressive  scrutiny  of  pri- 
vate life.  Yet  are  there  not,  let  me  ask,  some 
legislative  provisions,  liable  to  no  objection  in 
point  of  principle,  and  which  might,  if  not  at 
once,  yet  by  degrees,  be  introduced  ?  Would 
it  not  be  possible,  by  a  general  law,  to  pro- 
portion the  number  of  licensed  houses,  in 
each  municipality,  to  its  population,  accord- 
ing to  the  supposed  general  exigency ;  and, 
since  the  difficulty  of  discriminating  between 
different  applications  is  so  great,  as  almost  to 
excuse  the  municipal  authorities  for  unreason- 
ably multiplying  recommendations,  might  not  a 
heavy  tax  be  imposed  by  law,  on  the  renewal 
of  licenses  ;  a  tax  which  the  few  who  would 
then  monopolize  the  trafiick,  would  be  well 


83 

able  to  pay,  and  which  would  have  the  gene- 
ral effect  to  place  them  in  the  hands  of  per- 
sons of  some  standing  in  society,  as  well  as 
to  diminish  the  number  of  places  of  allure- 
ment ?  If  ardent  spirits  were  thus  made  to 
deposit  in  the  treasury  a  sum  adequate  to  the 
support  of  the  pauperism  they  create,  it  would 
not  seem  that  there  was  injustice  done.  The 
effect  of  a  similar  measure  has  been  incident- 
ally tried,  if  proof  of  the  effect  were  needed. 
In  three  years  from  the  beginning  of  1814, 
after  which  the  internal  duty,  levied  by  the 
federal  government,  became  payable,  fewer 
licences  by  far  were  taken  out  in  the  counties 
of  Suffolk  and  Essex,  than  in  the  years  be- 
fore and  after;  and  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt, 
that  the  same  was  the  consequence  elsewhere. 
In  populous  towns,  might  not  the  privilege  of 
retailing  liquor  be  withholden  from  places 
where  household  stores  are  sold,  and  where, 
of  consequence,  it  is  placed  in  the  way  of  so 
many  who  do  not  come  to  seek  it  ?  Is  there 
no  just  method  of  instituting  some  difference 


84 

in  the  treatment  of  paupers  by  reason  of  in- 
temperance, and  others  ?  May  not  guardians 
be  trusted  with  authority  over  the  persons  of 
their  intemperate  wards  ?  May  not  town  of- 
ficers be  required  to  prosecute  illegal  prac- 
tices of  retailers  ?  Might  they  not  be  forbid- 
den, under  pain  of  forfeiture  of  their  privilege, 
to  sell  liquor  to  paupers ;  and  to  other  individ- 
uals, after  receiving  from  town  officers  a  pri- 
vate injunction  to  that  effect,  grounded  on  a 
representation  made  by  the  friends  of  those 
individuals,  or  by  other  citizens,  that  they 
were  falling  into  intemperate  habits,  which 
representation  should  have  been  ascertained 
by  proper  inquiry  to  be  just  ?  One  happy 
effect  of  such  a  measure  would  be,  to  re- 
move from  the  view  of  the  many,  whose  occa- 
sions call  them  to  move  from  place  to  place, 
that  crowd  of  loathsome  loiterers,  young  and 
old,  who,  from  town  to  town,  are  seen  haunting 
the  spot  where  the  conveyance  rests.  In  Italy, 
where  natural  deformities  abound,  and  where, 
from  the  misplaced  generosity  of  travellers, 


85 

a  hideous  deformity  is  a  fortune,  no  sight  so 
painful  as .  that  is  to  be  seen.  A  limb  which 
nature  has  wrenched,  is  no  object  of  disgust, 
like  a  form  which  vice  has  disfigured.  Again ; 
one  state  has  prohibited  magistrates  from  hold- 
ing their  courts  in  taverns,  as  leading  their 
suitors  within  sight  of  temptation ;  and  a  go- 
vernour  of  New  York,  some  years  ago,  re- 
commended to  its  legislature,  that  demands 
for  spirituous  liquors  sold  by  retail,  should  be 
made  not  recoverable  by  law.  Is  there  noth- 
ing practicable  and  promising  in  such  provi- 
sions ?  It  becomes  me  not  to  say,  that  there 
are  not  insuperable  objections  to  all  such. 
But  it  is  not  amiss  for  the  questions  to  be 
moved.  And  those  of  us,  who  have  not  the 
laws  to  make,  have  only  to  inquire  what  it  is 
desirable  to  do.  We  may  leave  it  to  legisla- 
tors to  see  the  difficulties  which  occur  in  do- 
ing it. 

2.  Again  ;  is  there  nothing  to  be  expected 
to  this  end,  from  the  wisdom  of  the  nation  ? 
From  that  source,  if  such  were  the  publick 


86 

sense,  an  efficient  coercive  measure  would 
come  in  the  least  exceptionable  form.  The 
use  of  ardent  spirits  might  be  reasonably  ex- 
pected to  be  less,  in  proportion  as  their  price 
was  greater ;  and  if  ijot,  an  average  duty  and 
excise  of  twenty-seven  cents  on  each  gallon 
consumed  in  the  union,  would  meet  its  cur- 
rent expenditure.  I  am  not  so  extravagant 
as  to  suppose,  that  any  step  of  this  kind  can 
be  expected  to  be  taken ;  but,  if  it  could, 
what  discerning  person  would  not  say,  that 
we  saved  the  expense  of  a  good  government, 
from  a  charge  whence  it  could  well  be 
spared  ?  And  that  government,  so  far-sight- 
ed to  defend  its  institutions  from  foreign 
plots,  might  not  its  care  be  worthily  bestow- 
ed, to  shield  them  from  this  tremendous  in- 
testine foe?  It  spoke  the  nation's  sense, 
and  won  the  nation's  favour,  when,  not  long 
ago,  it  declared  to  the  world,  that  it  would 
maintain  the  strand  of  this  western  continent 
sacred  from  the  foot  of  every  asserter  of  ar- 
bitrary rule  ;  but  I  verily  believe,  that,  at  that 


87 

moment  and  at  this,  our  freedom  was  and  is 
more  endangered  from  the  different  quarter 
to  which  we  have  been  looking.  I  do  not 
say  that  the  country  would  applaud  more, 
but  I  am  persuaded  that  it  would  have  more 
reason  to  applaud,  a  determination  which 
should  be  announced  to  it,  to  repel  the  dan- 
ger from  this  source. 

These  are  not  considerations  out  of  place 
here,  because  in  a  country  where  the  citizens 
are  the  sovereign,  whatever  can  be  made  to 
appear  to  them  to  be  right,  will,  in  the  course 
of  time,  be  law  ;  and  I  need  not  say  that 
where  such  a  foe  to  religion,  being  a  proper 
subject  for  legal  restraints,  thrives  upon  legal 
sufferance,  the  search  of  methods,  to  drive  it 
from  that  refuge,  takes  a  place  among  reli- 
gious inquiries. 

II.  But  to  turn  to  other  remedies  capable 
of  being  applied  by  more  manageable  agency 
than  that  of  the  sovereign  power. 

1.  Great  things,  I  doubt  not,  might  be 
done,  by  the  provision  of  some  substitute  for 


ardent  spirits,  which  should  possess  their 
supposed  quality  to  refresh,  and  should  take 
their  place  as  the  customary  offering  of  good 
will.  This  is  by  no  means  a  hopeless  project, 
and  I  greatly  desire  to  see  it  tried.  In  France 
or  Italy,  I  did  not  see  an  intoxicated  person. 
It  is  not  principle  that  restrains  the  people  of 
those  countries.  They  are  by  no  means  free 
from  other  sensuality,  and  transplanted  to 
other  parts  of  the  world,  the  French,  at  least, 
are  not  seldom  drunkards.  It  is  not  want  or 
costliness  of  the  means  of  intemperance. 
The  strong  drink  that  deceives  so  many  oth- 
ers, comes  from  the  former  kingdom,  and  the 
vineyards  of  Italy  rear  abundant  temptation 
for  other  climes.  But  in  those  countries, 
men  have  not  the  same  faith  as  in  this,  in  the 
universal  infallibility  of  ardent  spirits,  and 
custom  has  not  made  them  the  appropriate 
offering  of  hospitality,  and  therefore  a  relish 
for  them  is  not  formed.  Friends  repair  to- 
gether to  houses  of  publick  entertainment, 
which  are  every  where  open,  as  with  us.    But 


89 

the  substance,  with  which  they  habitually  re- 
gale themselves,  excites  without  inebriating. 
The  fact  is  a  striking  one ;  and,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  speaks  du'ection  and  encouragement. 
We  wonder  at  some  of  the  vices  of  those 
nations.  The  most  vicious  of  them  would 
wonder  no  less  at  the  intemperance  of  ours. 
Their  preservative  from  it  is  equally  at  our 
command ;  and  when  they  have  found  a 
means  of  perfectly  temperate  festivity,  which 
satisfies  them,  in  a  like  use,  better  than  the 
hurtful  one  in  use  among  us,  is  it  not  worth 
the  trial  to  have  it  adopted  from  them  ?* 

*  In  Venice,  there  is  a  coffee-house  which  is  said  not 
to  have  been  closed,  day  nor  night,  for  a  hu^dred  and 
fifty  years.  This  gives  an  idea  of  the  demand  there  is 
for  that  refreshment.  EstabUshments  of  the  kind, — at 
many  (I  suppose,  most)  of  which  no  Uquor  except  cof- 
fee is  furnished, — are  found  exceedingly  profitable,  in 
Italy  and  France,  being  frequented  for  purposes  of  re- 
freshment and  sociability,  in  the  same  manner  as  our 
bar-rooms  ;  every  one  may  judge  how  much  less  injuri- 
ously. I  see  no  reason  why  they  should  not  succeed 
among  us.  Drams  are  often  resorted  to  for  want  of 
something  better,  by  travellers,  for  instance,  in  cold 


90 


2.  Again  ;  there  is  a  great  want  of  inno- 
cent pnblick  amusements  among  iis.     We  are 


weather,  or  by  night,  and  since  there  would  be  found 
every  thing  to  recommend  the  substitute,  the  fashion 
would  be  Ukely  to  spread.  The  light  wines  of  those  coun- 
tries seem  to  have  Httle  power,  if  any,  to  disease  the  ap- 
petite. They  are  dmnk  to  quench  thirst  for  the  most 
part,  as  milk  would  be.  Nothing  is  more  common  than^ 
at  the  little  inns  where  one  stops  between  one  city  and 
another,  to  see  people  of  the  labouring  class  drink  part 
of  a  bottle  of  wine,  largely  diluted  with  water,  and 
leave  the  rest,  which  they  have  paid  for.  I  have  heard 
it  said,  that  when  the  French  armies  returned  from  the 
wars  in  Holland,  they  brought  back  a  taste  for  distilled 
hquor,  as  the  English  are  reputed  to  have  done  before, 
from  the  campaigns  of  the  duke  of  Marlborough.  But 
if  this  were  the  case,  it  seems  that  the  imported  vice 
could  not  make  a  stand  against  the  fixed  habits  of  the 
nation.  Certain  it  is,  that  one  must  have  more  than  a 
visitor's  opportunities  of  being  acquainted  with  Paris, 
before  one  will  see  exhibitions  of  intemperance  which 
are  scarcely  to  be  avoided  in  any  English  or  American 
market  town.  Some  successful  specimens  of  light  wine 
have  been  produced  in  this  countiy,  particularly  at  Ve- 
vay,  in  Indiana,  by  the  colony  of  Swiss,  and  at  Scup- 
pernong,  in  North  Carolina.  These  are  experiments 
which  deserve  attention. 


91 

told  of  a  certain  king,  that  he  offered  a  prize 
for  a  new  diversion.  We  should  do  well  to 
follow  his  example,  stipulating  for  one  which 
should  be  harmless,  and  accessible  to  the 
whole  people.  In  other  countries,  museums 
of  antiquities  and  other  curiosities,  collections 
of  objects  of  natural  history,  galleries  of  statua- 
ry and  pictures,  and  extensive  and  magnificent 
publick  gardens,  are  places  of  universal  holiday 
resort  to  a  crowded,  but  perfectly  orderly, 
because  temperate  population.  Some  govern- 
ments, from  motives  of  policy,  are  at  much 
pains  to  recommend  these  recreations,  and 
make  their  subjects  happy  by  them  ;  and  the 
consequence  is,  that,  though  greatly  behind 
our  population  in  almost  all  respects,  they 
greatly  excel  it  in  some  natural,  gentle,  and 
refining  tastes.  They  think  not  of  the  appe- 
tite of  thirst  in  connexion  with  their  holiday 
pleasures.  They  love  no  riot.  They  will 
tolerate  none. — It  is  hard  to  imagine  any  way 
in  which  such  provision  is  ever  to  be  made 
among  us,  but  certain  it  is,  that  we  are  suffer- 
6 


92 

ing  for  the  want  of  it.  Of  a  portion  of  our 
people,  as  of  the  hardy  mountaineers,  whom 
we  resemble  not  a  little  in  good  and  bad,  it 
might  be  said  by  a  like  severe  observer  ; 

*  Unknown  to  them,  when  sensual  pleasures  cloy, 

*  To  fill  the  languid  pause  with  finer  joy. 

*  *  *  * 

*  In  wild  excess  the  vulgar  breast  takes  fire, 

*  Till,  buried  in  debauch,  the  bliss  expire.'* 

3.  There  is  an  institution  of  recent  inven- 
tion, which  has  done  much,  1  doubt  not,  and 

*  I  do  not  know  whether  I  have  here  said  any  thing 
liable  to  misconception.  Nobody,  I  suppose,  will  un- 
derstand me,  as  expressing  approbation  of  many  of  the 
publick  amusements  of  the  continent  of  Europe,  though, 
even  as  to  these,  he  would  be  har^Jy  tasked,  who  should 
undertake  to  maintain  that  they  lead  to  more  evil  than 
the  sottishness,  in  whose  place  they  stand.  I  am  not 
even  insensible  to  the  force  of  much  that  may  be  said 
against  the  moral  tendency  of  exhibitions  in  the  fine 
arts.  Part  of  this  ground,  however,  is  not  debateable. 
PubHck  walks,  and  collections  of  natural  curiosities, 
afford  relaxation  which  is  nothing  but  harmless  and  im- 
proving. Let  any  one  compare  the  scene  at  the  botan- 
ick  garden  in  Paris,  or  the  gardens  of  the  Grand  Duke 
at  Florence  on  some  festival  day,  with  that  displayed 


93 

may  be  made  to  do  more,  for  the  suppression 
of  intemperance.      I  speak  "of  the   Savings 

on  similar  occasions  on  our  common,  and  he  will  find  that 
he  must  have  recourse  to  other  considerations  to  sus-. 
tain  his  pride  of  country.  This  latter  exhibition  is  a 
scandal,  which  I  can  scarcely  doubt  the  city  government 
would  be  borne  out  by  the  publick  sense  in  removing  ; 
the  land  thus  violated,  and  the  credit  thus  lost,  being 
both  the  community's  property. 

This  may  seem  a  strange  connexion,  in  which  to  in- 
troduce the  subject  of  publick  executions,  but  it  is 
brought  to  my  mind  by  a  paragraph  in  one  of  the  pa- 
pers of  the  day,  in  which  I  am  writing  this  note.  It 
contains  an  account  of  a  recent  execution  for  murder  at 
Raleigh,  in  North  Carolina.  *  There  were  individuals,' 
says  the  writer, '  in  such  a  beastly  state  of  intoxication, 
that  not  even  this  horrid  spectacle  could  sober  them.' 
The  sentence  might,  I  fear,  be  inserted  in  every  such 
account.  A  publick  execution  is  an  occasion  of  strong 
excitement  to  the  spectators,  and  there  are  but  too 
many,  in  whose  minds  excitement  and  recourse  to 
liquor  are  indissolubly  associated.  This  subject  of  pub- 
lick executions,  or,  I  will  even  say,  of  collecting  crowds 
on  any  publick  occasion,  when  it  may  be  avoided,  is  a 
subject  entitled  to  much  more  serious  attention  than  it 
has  hitherto  received. 

To  return  to  the  provision  of  agreeable  employment 
for  those  seasons  of  leisure,  which  are  otherwise  likely 


94 

Banks.  The  individuals  who  have  establish- 
ed tliem  in  our  towns,  and  taken  care  to  have 

to  be  employed  in  drinking.  The  condition  of  our  peo- 
ple seems  to  me  to  offer,  in  one  particular,  a  plain  di- 
rection. With  us  every  body  can  read,  and  a  taste  for 
reading,  such  as,  to  a  certain  extent,  is  generally  pos- 
sessed among  us,  affords  a  never-failing  resource  for  the 
agreeable  occupation  of  time.  Pains  ought  to  be  taken 
to  cultivate  and  gratify  this  taste.  I  look  upon  the 
social  libraries,  established  in  many  of  our  country 
towns,  as  an  excellent  preservative  against  intemper- 
ance, when  proper  care  is  taken  to  furnish  them  with 
entertaining  as  well  as  instructive  books.  With  our 
long  winters,  our  agricultural  population  find  a  great 
deal  of  time  hanging  heavy  on  their  hands,  and  many 
resort  to  the  tavern  to  while  it  away,  who  would  not  do 
it,  if  they  could,  in  any  better  way,  find  agreeable  ex- 
citement for  their  minds.  I  think  it,  therefore,  to  be 
greatly  desirable,  that  large  collections  of  improving 
and  amusing  books  should  be  provided  in  every  village, 
for  the  general  use.  All  private  and  domestick  virtues 
would  find  a  new  aid  in  such  establishments.  I  ven- 
ture to  propose  something  further.  To  meet,  in  a  safe 
way,  the  demands  of  the  social  principle,  and  of  the 
taste  for  news,  both  which  have  a  place  among  im- 
pulses towards  the  tavern,  why  might  not  a  reading 
room  be  established  in  each  town,  in  some  central  place, 
(not  a  licensed  house,)  where  the  gazettes  and  other 


95 

them  attached  to  the  large  manufacturing  es- 
tablishments in  the  country,  are  publick  bene- 
factors worthy  of  cordial  praise.  I  mention 
them  particularly  here,  in  order  to  express 
my  conviction,  that  every  householder  and 
other  person  who  employs  labourers,  may  do 
important  good,  in  the  connexion  of  our  sub- 
ject, by  making  known  to  his  dependants  the 
existence  of  such  institutions.  A  person  who 
has  little  money  at  a  time,  is  tempted  to  part 
with  it  for  an  idle  indulgence,  because  he 
knows  of  no  way  to  dispose  of  a  small  surn 
to  advantage  ;  and  to  inform  him  of  such  a 
way,  is  to  save  much  more  than  his  money  to 

vehicles  of  news  might  be  found,  and  neighbours  might 
hold  their  consultations  ?  I  can  see  no  serious  difficulty 
in  the  way  of  such  institutions,  and  it  seems  to  me 
they  would  promise  much  good.  May  I  ask  magistrates, 
ministers,  or  other  publick  spirited  citizens  whose  eye 
this  suggestion  may  meet,  to  give  it  some  considera- 
tion ?  I  suspect  that,  in  cities.  Insurance  Offices,  in 
this  way,  answer  a  purpose,  which,  if  they  did  not  ex- 
ist, taverns,  with  all  their  dangers,  would  have  to 
sei-ve. 

6* 


9d 

him.  Should  there  be  such  a  person  present, 
let  me  say  to  him,  that  if  he  is  in  the  habit  of 
spending  eight  cents  a  day  in  ardent  spirits, 
and  will  discontinue  that  practice,  to  deposit 
the  amount  thus  redeemed,  in  the  savings 
bank,  he  may  in  twenty  years  be  master  from 
this  source,  of  nearly  a  thousand,  and  in  thirty 
years,  of  nearly  two  thousand  dollars.  How 
few  labouring  men  are  there,  who  do  not  dai- 
ly spend  that  sum  in  this  use,  and  what  a  dif- 
ference it  would  make  to  the  comfort  of 
their  age,  to  have  its  proceeds  at  their  com- 
mand, to  say  nothing  of  the  health,  good  tem- 
per, and  good  character  they  will  have  added 
to  their  purchase. 

4.  Much  may  be  done,  and  has  been  done, 
by  voluntary  combinations  of  persons  engag- 
ing together  to  discountenance  and  check  in- 
temperance, as  far  as  may  be,  by  their  au- 
thority, example  and  influence  ;  to  remonstrate 
with,  and  when  necessary,  to  prosecute  of- 
fenders against  the  laws  already  provided  in 
relation  to  the  subject ;  to  collect  and  circulate 


97 

facts  respecting  it,  and,  by  whatever  means V 
occur,  to  exert  a  joint  action  on  publick  opin- 
ion, that  agent  which  now  manages  the  world. 
The  Massachusetts  Society  for  suppressing 
Intemperance,  instituted  fifteen  years  ago,  has 
laboured  well  in  that  field.  To  its  ofl;en  dis- 
appointed, but  persevering  and  efficient  la- 
bours, the  anxiety  with  which  the  community 
now  regards  the  subject  is  in  great  part  to  be 
ascribed.  It  deserves  the  help  of  the  able  ; 
the  generosity  of  the  benevolent ;  and  the 
prayers  of  all.  Several  of  its  branches  have 
also  done  good  service.  I  will  specify  the 
case  of  one  in  the  town  of  Yarmouth.  Ten 
years  ago  some  leading  persons  of  that  en- 
terprising place  had  taken  alarm  at  the  ex- 
tent, to  which  habits  of  excess  were  spreading 
among  their  neighbours.  They  found,  as  they 
complained,  that  '  they  could  not  trust  their 
seamen.'  Four  individuals  met  to  take  coun- 
sel together  in  the  emergency,  and  began  a 
reformation  by  pledging  themselves  to  one 
another,  totally  to  abstain  from  ardent  spirits 
6t 


98 

themselves,  and  not  offer  them  to  their  la- 
bourers, nor  to  any  other  inhabitant  of  the 
town.  Nine  or  ten  individuals  before  long 
formed  a  society,  which  in  its  first  report  was 
able  to  give  it  as  '  their  confident  opinion,  that 
not  one  quarter  part  of  the  spirituous  liquor 
had  been  used  in  their  town  in  that  year, 
which  had  been  used  in  the  years  preceding.' 
All  the  retailers  of  ardent  spirits  gave  up  the 
business,  and  took  an  active  part  in  the  re- 
form. The  society,  under  the  original  com- 
pact of  abstinence,  now  consists  of  a  hundred 
of  the  most  respectable  citizens,  fifteen  of 
whom  have  acknowledged  themselves  to 
have  stood  before  on  most  dangerous  ground. 
Their  vessels  make  long  fishing  voyages  with- 
out distilled  liquor  on  board,  and  the  effect, 
in  short,  is  that  intemperance  is  almost  ban- 
ished from  the  place.  Such  an  instance  is  a 
trumpet  tongue  of  encouragement. 

Other  combinations  less  formal  and  less 
permanent,  for  the  same  object,  have  done 
their  measure  of  good.     Several  towns  in  the 


99 

neighbourhood  of  Yarmouth,  have,  in  town 
meeting,  instructed  their  selectmen  to  recom- 
mend no  retailers  for  licenses,  and  but  one  or 
two  innholders.  In  those  assemblies  presided 
the  old  virtue  of  the  pilgrims.  In  Cohasset, 
twelve  or  thirteen  licensed  householders  have 
of  late,  by  agreement  together,  given  up  their 
privilege.  The  example  of  conspicuous  bodies 
of  men  at  their  publick  meetings,  in  exclud- 
ing spirituous  liquors,  has  had  its  good  influ- 
ence, which  may  most  advantageously  be 
further  used.  The  denominations  of  Me- 
thodists and  Friends  have  adopted  ecclesias- 
tical regulations,  which  in  those  well  organized 
bodies  are  effective  checks. 

Individuals  have  a  similar  work  to  do; 
sometimes  by  means  of  particular  advantages. 
The  jurist,  for  instance,  has  a  task  in  a  strict 
administration,  and,  if  the  way  may  be  found, 
an  improvement  of  the  laws  relative  to  crim- 
inal indulgence.  The  divine,  in  publick  and 
in  private,  needs  to  expose  it  in  its  character 
of  an  awful  dereliction  of  the  law  of  God, 


100 

and  suicide  of  the  soul }  and  the  physician, 
from  the  press  and  in  the  family,  is  called  on 
to  make  known  its  terrifick  effects  upon  the 
system,  and  to  explain  what  habits  of  consti- 
tution, employment  and  diet  tend  to,  and 
what  oppose  it.^  This  is  a  kind  of  explana- 
tion particularly  wanted.  Full  experiment 
of  landholders  authorizes  me  to  say,  that,  be- 
sides serving  their  own  interest,  they  may 
prove  essentially  useful  to  the  labourers  they 
employ,  by  stipulating  to  give  them  higher 
wages,  and,  on  that  consideration,  to  withhold 
all  supply  of  ardent  spirits,  on  w^hatever  occa- 
sion or  pretence.  They  who  would  drink 
immoderately,  thinking  that  what  they  should 
leave  w^ould  be  gain  to  their  employers  and 
loss  to  themselves,  will  be  comparatively  tem- 
perate, unless  already  addicted  to  the  vice, 

*  An  excellent  service  would  be  rendered  to  the 
cause  by  medical  genUemen  and  town  officers  under- 
taking to  ascertain  and  publish,  from  year  to  year,  the 
number  of  persons  who  die  and  become  paupers  through 
intemperance. 


101 

when  they  know  that  tliey  must  be  the  poor- 
er for  what  they  consume.^     To  secure  ar- 

*  A  friend  informs  me,  that  in  expending  forty  thou- 
sand dollars  upon  the  large  manufacturing  establishment 
at  Uxbridge,  he  has  used  among  his  workmen  only  five 
or  six  hogsheads  of  spirits,  and  this  chiefly  among  those 
employed  in  ditching.  The  quantity  thus  named  seems 
not  small ;  but  it  is  trifling  in  proportion  to  the  amount  of 
labour  requisite  to  earn  such  a  sum.  He  gives  his  la- 
bourers advanced  v^^ages  on  a  stipulation  of  total  absti- 
nence from  distilled  spirits,  which  condition  violated  in 
a  single  instance,  he  parts  with  them.  Their  drink  is 
molasses  and  water ;  and  his  experience  of  their  peace- 
ableness  among  themselves,  and  better  service  of  his  in- 
terests with  a  perfectly  temperate  diet,  has  led  him  to 
the  resolution  henceforward  to  employ  no  labourer,  on 
any  terms  whatever,  except  with  this  restriction.  Oth- 
er similar  experiments  with  a  similar  result  are  within 
my  knowledge,  and  I  know  of  none  to  contradict  them. 
Let  us  be  warned  by  the  wretched  condition  of  the 
manufacturing  population  of  England,  and  let  measures 
be  seasonably  taken  to  avert  it  from  ours. 

I  scarcely  need  say  that  I  have  here  only  attempted 
to  indicate  a  few  of  the  most  direct  methods  of  precau- 
tion against  the  vice  in  question.  Every  thing  which 
tends  to  promote  industrious  and  orderly  habits,  to  fur- 
nish useful  occupation  to  the  mind,  above  all  to  bring 
it  under  religious  influences,  has  a  high  importance  ia 


102 

dent  spirits,  in  fine,  from  intemperate  use,  the 
method  seems  to  me  no  other  than  to  drive 
them  absolutely  from  common  use ;  and 
therefore,  without  undertaking  to  say  what  is 
every  one's  duty,  I  am  sure  that  every  one 
will  be  in  the  way  of  doing  great  good,  who 
will  resolve  not  to  keep,  never  to  offer,  and 
never  to  accept  them,  except  when  profes- 
sionally prescribed,  thus  causing  his  '  moder- 
ation to  be  known  unto  all  men,'  and  by  his 
conduct  calling  their  attention  to  the  subject. 
This  is  the  spirit  of  the  aposde's  resolution 
in  our  text,  in  adducing  which  I  did  not  think 

this  view.  The  libraries  for  apprentices,  and  scientifick 
lectures  for  young  mechanicks,  which  have  lately  been 
set  on  foot  in  this  city,  are  excellent  moral  instruments. 
The  commonwealth  is  likely  to  make  no  better  single 
provisions  against  intemperance  than  those  which  en- 
force the  support  of  common  schools  and  publick  wor- 
ship. Our  primary  schools  in  this  city  do  good  service, 
in  withdrawing  many  young  children  from  the  constant 
bad  example  of  vicious  parents  ;  but  the  system  needs 
to  be  completed  by  the  establishment  of  infant  schools, 
on  a  plan  of  recent  invention  which  is  producing  excel- 
lent fniits  in  the  parent  country. 


103 

it  necessary  to  detain  you  with  any  illustration 
of  its  coincidence  with  that  spirit  of  consider- 
ate, self-denying  charity  which  is  tlie  favour- 
ite grace  of  the  gospel.  I  will  undertake  to 
say  further,  that  the  young,  who  have  no  plea 
to  make  of  habits  formed,  and  so  backward 
to  relinquish  their  indulgence,  however  tem- 
perate,— I  will  say  that  the  young  should  re- 
solve absolutely  to  abstain  from  ardent  spirits. 
They  will  not  then,  it  is  true,  be  sure  of  be- 
ing temperate.  They  may  use  the  vinous 
and  other  liquors  to  a  criminal  excess  ;  but 
it  is  distilled  spirits,  that  experience  has 
proved  to  have  the  peculiar  power  to  steal 
away  the  resolution  while  they  win  the  taste, 
and  in  the  purpose  to  renounce  them  the 
greatest  danger  will  have  been  escaped. 

5.  Once  more ;  effectually  to  check  this, 
like  every  other  moral  evil,  we  must  faithfully 
do  what  in  us  lies,  by  inculcation  and  exam- 
ple, to  spread  the  sanctifying  influences  of  the 
gospel  of  Christ ;  of  that  pure  and  heavenly 
spirit  which  can  hold  no  fellowship  with  any 


104 

sensuality, — which  separates  itself  from  the 
pollutions  of  the  world,  as  the  crystal's  solid 
light  takes  no  stain  from  the  mire  of  the  cav- 
ern where  it  is  buried.  Address  then,  breth- 
ren, to  the  objects  of  your  solicitude,  the 
warnings  and  entreaties  of  your  Saviour's  re- 
ligion. There  is  the  sovereign  antidote  for 
every  moral  bane.  With  the  affectionate 
apostle,  let  the  language  of  your  lips  and  of 
your  conduct  to  them  be,  '  dearly  beloved, 
we  beseech  you,  as  strangers  and  pilgrims, 
abstain  from  fleshly  lusts,  which  war  against 
the  soul.'  Make  them  feel  the  earnestness 
of  that  entreaty  ;  the  reality  of  that  charac- 
ter ;  the  solemnity  of  that  truth.  Help  them, 
as  you  may,  to  attain  that  spirituality  of  mind, 
which  alone  can  be  relied  on  as  a  complete 
safeguard  against  disorders  of  the  life.  Quick- 
en them  to  a  devout  love  of  God,  so  that 
whether  they  eat  or  drink,  or  whatsoever 
they  do,  they  may  never  be  regardless  of 
glorifying  him.  Excite  them  to  a  holy  love 
of  Jesus,  that  they  may  aim,  like  him,  to  be 


105 

'  harmless,  undefiled,  and  separate  from  sin- 
ners.' 'Walk  in  the  spirit,  and  ye  shall  not 
fulfil  the  lusts  of  the  flesh.'  There  is  our 
path  of  safety.  There  we  shall  walk  un- 
harmed, however  example  or  viler  influences 
should  entice,  or  treacherous  opportunity  be- 
guile. A  heart  purified  by  religion  is  the 
citadel  of  unconquerable  strength  against  all 
assauks  of  evil.  My  friends,  labour  to  cre- 
ate in  others  that  purity  of  heart,  and  to  that 
end  cherish  it  in  yourselves,  with  watchful- 
ness and  prayer.  Let  others  see  how  holy 
in  all  manner  of  conversation  the  faith  of 
Christ  has  made  you,  and  by  that  appeal  win 
them  to  embrace  it  and  live  by  it.  When 
you  and  all  others  are  engaged  in  communi- 
cating its  blessed  spirit,  there  will  exist  no 
evils  to  deplore,  like  that  which  now  sum- 
mons us,  each  and  all,  to  strenuous  effort. 

I  have  said  nothing  of  methods  of  recovery 
of  persons  already  involved  in  intemperate 
habits.     They  are  not  to  be  abandoned.    But 


106 

my  only  hope  that  their  reformation  will  in 
any  considerable  number  of  cases  be  effected, 
rests  on  the  report  which  most  of  us  have 
heard,  that  a  physician  has  discovered  some 
preparation  which,  administered,  will  make 
the  patient  forever  after  nauseate  ardent  spir- 
its."^ Jf  this  be  true,  let  us  forthwith  decree 
festivals  and  erect  statues  to  him.  Our  tes- 
timonials of  publick  gratitude  to  such  a  bene- 
factor can  scarcely  be  too  cordial  or  too 
costly.  He  is  far  more  worthy  of  the  high- 
est honours  from  us,  than  were  those  champi- 
ons who,  in  ancient  times,  were  deified  for 
their  services  in  ridding  a  country  of  mon- 
sters. 


*  The  discovery  here  alluded  to,  was  that  announced 
in  the  papers  to  have  been  made  in  New  Orleans. 
The  prescription  of  Dr.  Chambers  of  New  York  has 
come  into  notice  since  the  publication  of  the  first  edi- 
tion. Dr.  Flint,  and  Dr.  Tuckerman,  missionary  of  the 
American  Unitarian  Association,  have,  in  several  in- 
stances administered  it  in  this  town  with  success,  as 
far  as  the  length  of  time  since  elapsed  authorizes  to 
pronounce  upon  the  result. 


107 

In  presuming  to  suggest  remedies,  my 
friends,  I  have  by  no  means  overlooked  or 
underrated  the  difficuhies  of  the  case.  But 
I  also  remember,  that  difficulties  are  the  in- 
stituted occasion  in  the  order  of  providence 
for  calling  out  great  wisdom  and  vigour.  I 
call  to  mind  words  of  the  first  president  of 
that  society,  to  which  I  have  referred  as  suc- 
cessfully labouring  in  this  cause  ;*  a  great 
and  good  man,  whose  devotions  were  used 
to  ascend  here  with  yours  for  a  divine  bless- 
ing on  all  good  counsels  and  all  just  works, 
and  whose  heart,  I  doubt  not,  was  often  warm- 
ed wit'i  yours  by  the  breathings  of  love  to 
God  and  man  which  then  fell  here  from  most 
persuasive  lips.  He  had  this  cause  much  at 
heart.  His  large  and  earnest  mind  counted 
the  obstacles,  but  it  was  the  better  to  meet 
them.  '  As  the  object  is  good,'  said  he,  '  so 
it  is  practicable.'  I  love  to  repeat  that  say- 
ing.     The  object  is  good  ;  therefore  it  is  prac- 

*  I'he  late  honourable  Samuel  Dexter. 


108 

cable.  It  is  an  enterprize  against  that  which 
is,  by  eminence,  the  misfortune,  the  danger 
of  our  beloved  country  ;  the  blot  on  the  fair 
works  of  God  among  us ;  the  weapon  of  the 
prince  of  darkness.  It  has  a  right  then  to 
the  services  of  every  prudent  man,  every  pa- 
triotick  citizen,  every  disciple  of  Christ ;  and 
it  asks  the  benefit  of  no  other  services  than 
those,  effectually  to  maintain  itself.  I  desire 
more  and  more  to  realize, — for  it  is  a  truth 
which  all  religion  establishes,  and  all  future 
experience  is  to  seal, — that  under  the  govern- 
ment of  a  God  who  hath  pleasure  in  righteous- 
ness and  favour  for  its  toils,  single-minded 
men  need  no  other  omen  for  the  conquest,  in 
due  time,  over  any  difficulties,  than  the  omen 

of  A  GOOD  CAUSE. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROW 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY — TEL.  NO.  642-3405 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  c 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


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